Transformations  in
Business & Economics

DESTINATION ENVIRONMENTAL BRANDING AND SUSTAINABLE ECO-CONSCIOUS CONSUMER³
Syed Hasnain Alam, Rizwan Raheem Ahmed, Alharthi Rami Hashem E, Nor Zafir Md Salleh, Laszlo Vasa, Melica Delibasic, Josef Abrham

ABSTRACT. This research aims to examine the role of eco-tourism of destination ecological, economic branding to enhance the sustainable eco-conscious consumers in an emerging economy. Empirical research investigates the tourism management effects on the image and equity of the city & finally inspects these effects on international visitors across the country. Data is collected from 368 eco conscious consumers from the emerging city. For the analyses purposes, we employed Partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to advance the development and testing of theory in eco-tourism research. Pragmatic results demonstrate that eco-tourism destination branding and destination image have played a significant role in improving the overall destination of the brand equity of the city. A systematic scientific procedure for SEM results estimation is presented and applied to an annotated tourism as a case example. The research established that city destination features like destination image, services, and experience significantly contribute to destination branding. This research suggested a theoretical contribution to the existing body of current knowledge regarding eco-tourism marketing as a refined quantitative analysis. It will ultimately permit future researchers to elucidate the research's contribution to comprehending the prominence of destination branding among tourists in an emerging economy.

KEYWORDS:  eco-tourism, tourism and environment, tourism and sustainability, green environment, emerging economy, eco-conscious consumer.

JEL classification:  D12, M31, M30.

³Acknowledgement:  We would like to thank Taif University Researchers Supporting Project number (TURSP-2020/338), Taif University, Taif, Saudi Arabia for supporting this study.