Can we enhance low-carbon tour intentions through climate science or responsibility sharing information?

In line with social representations theory, our study presents two mediating models to examine the psychological mechanism underlying how tourists’ intentions toward low-carbon tours could be enhanced through a reduction in their ambivalence toward low-carbon tours. Recruiting 767 independent tourists, applying an ordinary-least-square simple regression, and following the mediating testing approach of Baron and Kenny (1986), we have found that using scientific climate information can efficiently strengthen tourists’ travel intentions toward engaging in low-carbon tours and can also reduce tourists’ ambivalence toward low-carbon tours. We found, however, that another tourist education approach, responsibility sharing, did not have a similar effect, owing possibly to the social-loafing effect.