A critical evaluation of sustainable tourism from the integrated perspective: Conducting moderated–mediation analysis

• This paper problematizes the terms ‘sustainable attributes and recommendation’.
• This paper uses empirical material from 400 tourists.
• Moderated–mediation analysis was conducted.
• This paper tests hypotheses using structural equation modeling (SEM) methods.

We develop and test a new integrated theoretical model of moderated mediation in which sustainable experience serves as an intervening mechanism that directly explains the associations among motivation, sociocultural impacts and recommendation. We also consider the mediation effects of sustainable experience and the moderating role of satisfaction and emotional values. The results of a study that included 400 tourists provide support for this model across various dimensions of sustainable tourism. Somewhat unexpectedly, the mediating effect of a sustainable experience is not found to be contingent on the relationships between sociocultural impacts and recommendations, and the direct effects of type of sociocultural impacts and sustainable experience are not supported. However, we found relationships between motivation to sociocultural impacts and sustainable experience and a mediating effect of a sustainable experience on both motivation and recommendation. The results also confirmed that satisfaction and emotional values increase the positive effects of sustainable experience and recommendation. We discuss how this intriguing design of moderated mediation relationships could be explained by using tourism theory and research on regulatory focus.