Relationship between Recreational Greenway Involvement and Residents' Loyalty and Environmental-Responsibility Behavior: A Case Study of Zengcheng Greenway, Guangzhou

Abstract

Situational factors affect the continuation and spillover of individual emotions and behavior. People's environmental-responsibility behavior in ecotourism situations can be difficult to extend to everyday life. Greenway leisure linked to everyday life provide new opportunities to cultivate people's environmental-responsibility behavior. In the context of greenway leisure, and based on the theories of self-perception and spillover, this paper argues that the impact of leisure involvement on loyalty can take one of two paths: surface "willingness loyalty" and deep "attitude loyalty." Environmental-responsibility behavior during leisure activities can be divided into "specific environmental-responsibility behavior" and "daily environmental-responsibility behavior." The three dimensions of leisure involvement are also subdivided into, attraction, centrality and self-expression. The paper constructs a relationship model between leisure involvement,loyalty and environmental-responsibility behavior. Taking Zengcheng Greenway (a typical greenway-development project) as a case study, a questionnaire was distributed to 334 Greenway residents. The relationship between the three dimensions was empirically studied using a structural-equation model. The results were as follows: (1) The direct impact of various dimensions of residents' leisure involvement on environmental-responsibility behavior was not significant in greenway situations. This suggests that it may be important to cultivate deeper emotions among residents, as a way of evoking environmental-responsibility behavior in greenway situations linked to everyday life. (2) The "centrality" and "self-expression" associated with leisure involvement have a positive impact on specific environmental-responsibility behaviors during greenway leisure because they affect residents' willingness and attitude loyalty. However, only attitude loyalty can influence people's daily environmental-responsibility behavior. This result demonstrates the difference between willingness and attitude loyalty. Only the deep emotion of attitude loyalty can cause positive greenway-related attitudes and emotions about the environment to spill over into everyday life. (3) In the greenway context, the "attraction" dimension of leisure involvement has no significant impact on loyalty, primarily because people's pleasant perceptions and experiences of greenway leisure are highly substitutable, making it difficult for them to produce loyalty emotions. The present study proves that leisure involvement and attitude loyalty can be strengthened to improve residents' overall environmental-responsibility behavior. On this basis, it also proposes targeted countermeasures and suggestions for the current Greenway Construction. The first step is to strengthen the connectivity of urban, rural, and ecological greenways, emphasizing the role of greenways in travel, leisure, and ecological protection, and improving the status of greenways in people's daily lives and leisure activities. The second step is to endow the greenway with more diversified cultural attributes, so that people can find their own cultural preferences and personality expressions. Third, the experiences and forms of creative expression associated with the greenway should be actively strengthened, giving it a unique "selling point" to cultivate people's understanding of greenway attitude loyalty. Future research should explore urban recreational spaces, recreational belts around cities, and other leisure sites. It will be important to identify differences in the paths used to form environmental-responsibility behavior in these contexts, compared with greenways.

Keywords

• leisure involvement
• loyalty
• environmental-responsibility behavior
• greenway
• guangzhou