2.1. DSR for Sustainable Development
Sustainable development in tourism has become more important due to an uptick in environmental damage, climate change, a depletion of natural resources, human rights issues, fair trade, and over-tourism. Sustainable development is defined as a process that meets the needs of the present generation without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs [
14]. To achieve this goal, multiple aspects must be considered when developing tourism destinations including economic, political, socio-cultural, and ecological. The World Tourism Organization has provided the following guidelines for sustainable tourism development. First, sustainable tourism should be based on the optimal use of the environmental resources, such as maintaining essential ecological processes and helping to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity, which comprise key elements in tourism development. Second, sustainable tourism should respect the socio-cultural legitimacy of the involved communities, conserve all aspects of their cultural heritage and traditional values, and contribute to inter-cultural understanding and tolerance. Finally, sustainable tourism should ensure feasible long-term economic operations while also providing fairly distributed socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders, including stable employment, income-earning opportunities, and social services to host communities, as well as contributing to poverty alleviation [
6]. In addition, a high level of dependence on natural, social, and cultural resources of the destination promotes the necessity of responsible tourism management in the tourism industry [
15].
Su et al. [
9] proposed the concept of DSR as an extension of the existing CSR in tourism. DSR is defined as the collective ideology and efforts of destination stakeholders to conduct socially responsible activities and it is perceived by not only local residents, but also tourists [
9,
10,
12]. In this sense, DSR is regarded as the obligation to protect and improve the social and organizational interests of the entire destination, which applies to all stakeholders including tourists, community residents, industry, and governments [
16]. DSR emphasizes the importance of responsible efforts of all involved stakeholders to build tourist destinations in a sustainable manner. In light of the definition of DSR, it is obvious that DSR should be jointly supported by not only the public and the private sectors involved in a destination, but also the tourists [
10,
11]. If DSR is not preferred by tourists, it will weaken the motive of DSR, and destination sustainability will be difficult to achieve. This assumption implies the need to identify the impact of DSR on tourists’ perceptions and behaviors.
Research on the response of tourists to DSR is now in its early stages. Su and Swanson [
10] identified that DSR increases tourists’ positive emotions and at the same time reduces their negative ones. Also, they suggested that DSR ultimately has a positive impact on tourists' environmentally responsible behavior. Su et al. [
12] investigated the impact of DSR perception on the intention of tourists to revisit a destination and recommend the place to their acquaintances and found that DSR is positively associated with both revisit and referral intentions. According to the study by Tran et al. [
11], DSR has shown a positive effect on tourists’ satisfaction through a mediating effect on their emotions.
2.2. The Impacts of DSR on Destination Image and Tourist Loyalty
Like any other consumer product, not only is a tourism destination a package of tourism facilities and services, but it is also composed of a number of attributes [
17] and consists of an amalgam of products and services that are available in one location and are capable of drawing visitors to where it spatially confines them [
18]. Hence, a destination can shape the tourists’ perception and attitude with various demographic, natural, technological, political and cultural aspects [
19,
20]. Baloglu and McCleary [
21] presented a general framework of destination image formation, suggesting that a destination’s image is formed by both stimulus and personal aspects. Variables of the stimulus aspects include information sources, previous experiences, and distribution. The examples of personal aspects are tourists’ social and psychological aspects such as value, motivations, personality, age, education, and so forth.
While focusing their perspective on the entire destination, Su et al. [
9] proposed DSR based on prior CSR studies in the tourism industry. Thus, DSR is the collective activities of all the relevant stakeholders in the destination to minimize negative effects in terms of economy, environment, and social culture and to maximize benefits with which the destinations provide tourists. The entirety of these efforts are delivered to tourists and have an influence on tourists’ experiences through tourism programs, attractions, accommodations, operating staff, and overall atmosphere. From this point of view, DSR is seen as one of the fundamental stimuli, forming a destinations image.
The evaluation of DSR by tourists affects their perceptions toward their destination in a variety of ways [
6]. First, tourists may feel anxious about their well-being being undermined. Tourists are not only likely to avoid polluted tourism destinations, but also likely to consider the level of crime, incidences of locality, noise pollution, etc. Therefore, tourists who recognize a destination as a place with a high level of DSR will certainly have a positive image of it. In addition, a high level of DSR implies that destinations have well preserved natural, historical, and cultural tourist attractions. Different attractions will provide tourists with a variety of experiences, which is something that is difficult for tourists to feel in daily life. In the end, these versatile experiences will bring them a positive image of the tourism destination. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that some tourists want to avoid any situation in which their activities at the tourism destination have a negative impact on the area. In cases such as this, these tourists’ perceptions toward DSR can minimize the potential of negative impact and will create a positive image of the tourism destination. Finally, tourists who positively perceive a tourism destination are more likely to revisit there or recommend it to their neighbors. As a consequence, there will be a positive relationship between destination image and tourist loyalty [
22,
23,
24].
This study borrows the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework proposed by Mehrabian and Russell [
25] to explain the relationship between DSR (S), destination image (O), and tourist loyalty (R) [
10]. Therefore, this study sets destination image as a mediator, explaining the mechanism of how DSR affects tourist loyalty [
26]. The tourists’ perceived DSR is a cognitive antecedent of the tourists’ destination image and this image ultimately affects tourist loyalty [
12,
27].
The definition of tourism destination image varies slightly among scholars [
28]. Hunt [
29] defined tourism destination image as “impressions that a person or persons hold about a state in which they do not reside” and Crompton [
30] defined it as “the sum of the beliefs, ideas, and impressions that a person has of a destination”. Similarly, Kim and Richardson [
31] defined it as “a totality of impressions, beliefs, ideas, expectations, and feelings accumulated toward a place over time”. Sahin and Baloglu [
32] saw it as “the perception of a person or a group of people regarding a place”. Despite these subtle differences, the majority of previous studies agreed that destination image is one of the main aspects in determining the success of destination management, marketing, and branding [
33] since the image perceived by tourists plays a crucial role not only in pre-visit behaviors but also post-visit behaviors [
21,
34,
35,
36,
37].
When tourists make a decision regarding the travel options, the destination image that people have toward a specific destination is directly associated with other aspects such as motivations, interests, cultural background, emotional state, and self-image [
35]. Hence, decision-making regarding travel is based on perceptions rather than rational and logical judgment [
38,
39]. In other words, tourists often choose destinations based on awareness of information rather than what the information is [
40]. As such, it is necessary for destinations to create positive images for tourists for successful marketing. In this sense, Echtner and Ritchie [
33] insisted a destination must differentiate itself from its competitors in an advantageous manner or increase their positive mindshare. Every place has a specific image that plays an important role in attracting tourists [
41].
In tourism literature, several researchers have regarded destination image as a multidimensional composition, with the two main dimensions being cognitive and affective [
42,
43,
44]. The cognitive component refers to the beliefs and the knowledge held by tourists regarding a destination’s attributes [
45] and the affective component is defined by their feelings or emotional responses [
46]. From a theoretical point of view, there is a general agreement that the cognitive component is an antecedent of the affective component [
47,
48,
49,
50,
51]. For instance, Lin et al. [
48] demonstrated that tourists develop feelings about a destination only after they cognitively evaluate it. Based on the discussions above, we can formulate the following hypotheses:
H1. The perception of DSR has a positive impact on cognitive destination image.
H2. The perception of DSR has a positive impact on affective destination image.
H3. Cognitive destination image is positively associated with affective destination image.
2.3. Destination Image and Tourist Loyalty
Tourist loyalty has been treated as an extension of customer loyalty in a tourism setting [
52,
53]. Given that destination experience is treated as a product, tourists decided to revisit or recommend the destination to friends and relatives after they travel to the destination [
1,
54]. Tourist loyalty has been conceptualized through the following approaches: behavioral loyalty (e.g., sequence purchase, proportion of patronage, or probability of purchase), attitudinal loyalty, and composite loyalty [
55]. Yoon and Uysal [
54] argued that the behavioral approach may not be enough to explain why and how they are willing to revisit or recommend destinations to other potential tourists. Attitudinal loyalty refers to tourists’ psychological expressions of things such as intention to revisit a destination or recommend it to other potential tourists. In addition, Yoon and Uysal [
54] also argued that the composite approach has limitations in that not all the weighting or quantified scores may apply to both the behavioral and attitudinal aspects, as they may have differing measurements. For the reasons above, in this study, we adopted the attitudinal approach for tourist loyalty, which refers to tourists’ psychological expressions of things such as intention to revisit a destination or recommend it to other potential tourists [
1,
36].
Although many studies have identified image as an antecedent of loyalty, mixed findings on the direction of the relationship have been found [
46]. Thus, it is imperative to establish the relationship between destination image and tourist loyalty. Previous studies have found that positive correlations exist between tourist loyalty and image components including cognitive image and affective image. For the relationship between cognitive image and tourist loyalty, McDowall and Ma [
24] demonstrated that cognitive image has a significant impact on tourists’ intention to recommend. Some researchers obtained results showing that there are statistically significant relationships between both cognitive and affective image evaluations and intention to recommend [
51,
56]. When it comes to the relationship between affective image and tourist loyalty, Lee et al. [
23] discovered that tourists with higher emotional attachment to South Korea were more likely to recommend the destination to others. Li et al. [
49] demonstrated a direct relationship between the affective image and behavioral intentions. Kim and Malek [
44] revealed the empirical result that tourist loyalty was positively influenced by affective destination image. Therefore, it is expected that the more positive the image of a destination held by a tourist, the greater the likelihood that he or she would recommend it to other potential tourists such as friends and relatives [
36]. Based on the above arguments and empirical findings, we posit the following hypotheses:
H4. Cognitive destination image has a positive impact on tourist loyalty.
H5. Affective destination image has a positive impact on tourist loyalty.
2.4. The Role of Cultural Differences in Tourist Perception
The perception of tourists varies depending on cultural differences [
57,
58]. Tourists from different countries place emphasis on varying aspects of services offered at the destination, and it is likely that they have different levels of satisfaction, even if experiencing the same service [
57,
59,
60]. Therefore, understanding the tourists’ cultural backgrounds will help destinations design culture-oriented marketing and services [
61,
62,
63]. There have been many studies examining differences in tourist perceptions and behaviors due to cultural differences [
64]. Tourism motivations vary based on these cultural differences. You et al. [
65] identified the difference between Japanese and U.K tourists using Dann’s push-and-pull theory. In an experimental study conducted by Levy [
66], the overall satisfaction, word-of-mouth referrals, and the intention to repeat a visit also vary between Asians and Westerners. Tsang and Ap [
67] identified the differences in relational quality experiences between Asian and Western tourists using Hofstede’s study. In a study by Kim and Malek [
44], the relationship between the destination image and the tourist loyalty in Asian tourists were stronger than that of their Western tourists. However, the relationship that was apparent between the self-congruity and tourist loyalty was reversed. This is attributed to the preferences inherent between individualistic and collectivist cultures. In other words, Western tourists belong to a more individualistic culture, so they are more likely to be satisfied and loyal when they are allowed to do things themselves. Choi and Chu [
68] also found that Asian and Western tourists place different importance levels on hotel service items. Asian tourists generally consider value for money to be the most important, while Western tourists consider it to be the room quality as the most important aspect. The hotel facilities also play a part in hotel satisfaction, with different amenities being valued based on different cultural demands [
69]. In addition, there are also notable differences in services, brand personality perceptions, visit intentions, tourist satisfaction, tourist behaviors, etc., in terms of their cultural backgrounds [
57,
64,
68,
70,
71]. DSR is defined as the collective activities of destination stakeholders to conduct socially responsible tourism [
10,
11]. The perception of what is DSR can vary depending on their culture. Different cultures show different degrees of importance on various components of DSR. These differences cause differences in the relationship between the destination image and tourist loyalty. Hence the hypothesis is as follows:
H6. The relationships among DSR, destination image, and tourist loyalty are different between Asian tourists and Western tourists.