Effects of Environmental Education on Visitors' Pro-environmental Behavior in National Parks: an Empirical Test of a Chain Multiple Mediation Model

The goal of environmental education is to cultivate pro-environment citizens, and national parks have been recognized as the best place for environmental education. From the perspective of external situation, this paper explores the influence path of visitors' environmental education perception on pro-environment behavior, takes tourism environmental cognition, anticipated guilt and place attachment as mediating variables, and constructs the SOR expanded model of perception-cognitive-emotion-behavior based on cognitive psychology theory. Wuzhishan area of Hainan Tropical Rain Forest National Park has been selected as the case study. A total of 406 valid questionnaires have been collected and verified by structural equation model method. The results show that: ① Environmental education perception can have an indirect positive effect on pro-environmental behavior through tourism environmental cognition and anticipated guilt, in which tourism environmental cognition and anticipated guilt can play a mediating role alone or have a chain mediating role. ② Both environmental cognition and anticipated guilt have significant positive effects on pro-environmental behavior, and the influence of the latter is greater than that of the former, while the influence of place attachment on pro-environmental behavior is not significant. ③ SOR extended model — perception-cognitive-emotion-behavior model has proved that it can be used to explain the production path of individual pro-environmental behaviors. The conclusion of this paper has important reference value for the planning of environmental interpretation system and the selection of forms and contents of environmental education activities in national parks.