GREEN PARADOX IN CREATIVE RURAL TOURISM: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND PILOT SCALE ASSESSMENT

Abstract

Creative rural tourism destinations increasingly promote green practices to attract eco-conscious travelers, yet tourists do not always respond positively. This study addresses this phenomenon, termed the “green paradox”, by developing a conceptual framework integrating the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, the Theory of Consumption Values, and Attribution Theory. The proposed model positions perceived authenticity as the stimulus that generates green perceived value, which influences revisit intention through two competing pathways: a positive pathway mediated by green satisfaction (via intrinsic attribution) and a negative pathway mediated by green skepticism (via extrinsic attribution). Eight propositions specify the relationships among five constructs. The study extends S-O-R from single mediation to a competing mediation architecture accommodating opposing evaluative processes within the organism stage. A pilot study (n = 97) using PLS-SEM via SmartPLS 3 confirms satisfactory psychometric properties for all 21 measurement items contextualized for Vietnamese creative rural tourism, with outer loadings ranging from 0.834 to 0.909, reliability coefficients exceeding 0.70, AVE values above 0.738, and discriminant validity established through both the Fornell-Larcker criterion and HTMT ratios. The validated scales provide a foundation for subsequent large-scale empirical testing of the proposed framework.