Effect of Consumption Values and Travel Mindfulness on Tourists’ Ecotourism Interest and Engagement Behavior

ABSTRACT Despite the increasing importance of value-driven and novelty-seeking experiences in ecotourism places, the existing literature is silent about how such experiences augmented through tourists’ mindful consumption behavior. Hence, we employed the theory of consumption value to investigate the impact of epistemic, emotional, and functional values on tourists’ ecotourism interest, psychological, and community engagement and examine moderating roles of travel mindfulness on ecotourism interest. We have adopted structural equation modeling and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, which found that epistemic, functional, and emotional value significantly influence ecotourism interest. Ecotourism interest further positively impacts psychological and community engagement. Our study makes a scholarly contribution to ecotourism by investigating the role of important consumption value dimensions on tourist engagement in ecotourism destinations. Moreover, the moderating role of travel mindfulness reveals that tourists who are mindful or aware of their surroundings are curious to learn new things during the tour, enhancing ecotourism interest.