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Why Vietnamese Travellers Choose Sustainably: Personal Norms Outweigh Intention (n=549)

Tran et al. (Sustainability, MDPI, 2025) — SEM on 549 Vietnamese tourists shows personal norms drive sustainable travel behaviour directly, bypassing stated intent.

By Joy Nguyen
Sam Mountain at sunset near Chau Doc — off-the-beaten-path Vietnam in the Mekong borderlands
Sam Mountain at sunset near Chau Doc — off-the-beaten-path Vietnam in the Mekong borderlands

In May 2025, Tran Thi Thu Thuy and four colleagues published "Bridging Human Behavior and Environmental Norms: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Sustainable Tourism in Vietnam" in Sustainability (MDPI), Vol. 17, Issue 10. It's a methodologically rigorous attempt to answer a long-debated question in tourism behavioural research: what actually makes a tourist behave sustainably — rational choice or moral obligation?

The answer, in the Vietnamese context: moral obligation, more than rational choice. And the implications for how the country's tourism operators should design and market sustainable products are substantial.

What the study did

Methodology

  • Sample: 549 Vietnamese tourists, recruited via stratified sampling across three major regions of Vietnam (covering North, Central, and South).
  • Theoretical frame: integrated two well-established models —
    • Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) — Attitude, Subjective Norms, and Perceived Behavioral Control all shape Behavioral Intention, which then drives behaviour.
    • Value-Belief-Norm theory (VBN) — Environmental Awareness shapes Altruistic and Biospheric Values, which activate the New Environmental Paradigm worldview, which forms Personal Norms, which drive behaviour.
  • Analysis stack: Exploratory Factor Analysis → Confirmatory Factor Analysis → Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) → supplemental regression checks.
  • Model fit: the final SEM accounted for 60.8% of variance in Sustainable Consumption Behavior (SCB) — a strong fit by behavioural-research standards.

Headline finding

The two pathways operate differently:

PathwayMechanismOutcome
TPBAttitude / Subjective Norms / Perceived Behavioral Control → Behavioral Intention → Sustainable Consumption BehaviorSignificant — but mediated through conscious intent
VBNEnvironmental Awareness → Altruistic & Biospheric Values → New Environmental Paradigm → Personal Norms → Sustainable Consumption BehaviorSignificant and direct — bypasses conscious intent

The VBN pathway's direct effect — Personal Norms shaping behaviour without going through deliberate intent — is the headline. In Western individualist cultures, most behavioural-tourism research finds personal norms operating through intent. Tran et al.'s Vietnamese sample shows them operating directly.

Why it matters culturally

The authors interpret this through Vietnamese collectivist cultural context. In a collectivist society:

  • Communal values and social harmony carry more weight than individual preference.
  • Felt moral obligations (often shaped by family expectations, community norms, social relationships) can drive behaviour without requiring conscious cost-benefit reasoning.
  • "Implicit" moral commitments behave more like reflexes than like deliberate choices.

The finding doesn't prove Vietnamese tourists don't think rationally about their travel choices. It does show that moral-normative pathways have direct behavioural effects that they often don't have in Western individualist samples.

What this means for travel and tourism

1. For Vietnamese-tourist-facing operators: design defaults, not choices

The single most actionable implication of the VBN-direct-pathway finding is embed sustainability into the default experience rather than offering it as an opt-in upgrade.

  • A homestay that quietly composts and uses solar lighting captures more sustainable-behaviour value than one that offers an "eco" tier alongside a standard tier.
  • Cruise boats that default to no single-use plastic capture more sustainable-behaviour value than ones that ask guests to opt into a plastic-free option.
  • Cooking classes that source ingredients locally and let students see the supply chain capture more sustainable-behaviour value than ones that mention sustainability in marketing copy without changing their actual practices.

For Vietnamese visitors, opt-out designs (sustainable-by-default, opt out if you want the lower-cost less-sustainable option) outperform opt-in designs.

2. For Vietnamese-tourist-facing marketing: frame as duty, not as preference

Western sustainable-tourism marketing typically uses individualist framings: "Make a difference. Travel responsibly. Be the change."

The data here suggests different framings work better for Vietnamese tourists:

  • Community and family duty: "What would your children's generation say?"
  • Cultural respect: "Honour the village by leaving no trace."
  • Implicit moral default: "Of course. Travel this way."

These framings activate the personal-norm pathway directly, rather than asking the visitor to deliberate.

3. For international visitors: traditional choice architecture still works

The 549-respondent sample is Vietnamese-resident tourists, and the cultural mechanism is specifically collectivist. Western individualist-cultural visitors (US, UK, Australia, Northern Europe) operate more on the TPB pathway — deliberate intent matters more, opt-in choice architectures work better.

For international travellers reading this study, the practical takeaway is different:

  • Your sustainable-travel choices flow more from deliberate decisions than from felt obligations. That's not better or worse — it's the way most international visitors operate.
  • The choice architectures that help you (clear pricing of sustainable options, transparent operator practices, third-party certifications) are the ones that operators marketing to Western audiences should emphasise.

4. For destinations: understand which audience you're optimising for

The finding has destination-management implications. Some Vietnam destinations (Da Lat, Sapa, Mui Ne, Phu Quoc) have a heavy domestic Vietnamese visitor base. Others (Hoi An old town, Ha Long Bay overnight cruises, Ninh Binh boat tours) have a much more international visitor mix.

For domestic-skewing destinations, sustainability strategies should lean on default-and-norm design. For international-skewing destinations, choice architectures and certifications are more effective. The pattern matters for Hoi An's community-based tourism (mixed audience) and the Central Highlands (heavily domestic) very differently.

5. The 60.8% variance explained is a strong empirical foundation for further research

For comparison, behavioural-tourism research often achieves 30–50% explained variance. 60.8% is unusually high and suggests the integrated TPB+VBN model is well-suited to the Vietnamese context. Expect more Vietnam-specific behavioural research to build on this framework over 2026–2027.

Limitations & caveats

  • The sample is Vietnamese-resident tourists only. International-visitor behaviour to Vietnam (and Vietnamese tourist behaviour outside Vietnam) may not fit the same model.
  • "Sustainable Consumption Behavior" is a self-reported construct. The study measures what tourists say they do, not necessarily what they actually do. Behavioural validation research (observation, transaction data) would strengthen the findings.
  • The VBN-direct pathway finding doesn't quantify how much of the personal-norm effect is mediated through intent versus direct. The SEM result shows direct effect; magnitude of mediation isn't fully published in the abstract.
  • The 60.8% variance is on the construct of SCB, not on actual sustainable outcomes. A high explanatory model on a self-reported scale doesn't automatically translate to high outcome impact.
  • Cultural framing is interpretive. The authors' attribution to Vietnamese collectivism is reasonable and consistent with broader research, but the same pattern could be partly explained by other variables (age, education, urban vs rural, religious composition) that aren't fully controlled in the public abstract.

Sources & further reading

Related on this site:

Cite the original research

Tran, T. T. T., Nguyen, T. T. T., Vo, T. T. T., Su, T. O. H. & Tran, T. D. N. — Sustainability (MDPI), Vol. 17, Issue 10 — “Bridging Human Behavior and Environmental Norms: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Sustainable Tourism in Vietnam”, May 2025. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/10/4496

Day Trips Vietnam summarises published research as a reader service. We do not control the original source and may not share every conclusion. About our editorial approach.

Frequently asked questions

What was the study trying to figure out?

Whether sustainable consumption behaviour by Vietnamese tourists is driven primarily by rational decision-making (Theory of Planned Behavior — TPB) or by deeper moral/normative pressures (Value-Belief-Norm — VBN). The authors built an integrated model that included both, surveyed 549 Vietnamese tourists, and let the data show which pathway dominated.

Who are the authors and which journal?

Tran Thi Thu Thuy, Nguyen Thi Thanh Thao, Vo Thi Thu Thuy, Su Thi Oanh Hoa, and Tran Thi Diem Nga, published in *Sustainability* (MDPI) Vol. 17, Issue 10, in May 2025. The paper is open-access — free to read in full.

What was the methodology?

The team collected data from 549 Vietnamese tourists using stratified sampling across three major regions (broadly North/Central/South Vietnam). They analysed the data with Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), supplemented by regression analysis. The final SEM model accounted for 60.8% of variance in sustainable consumption behaviour — a strong fit for behavioural research.

What's the headline finding?

Personal moral norms — the internalised sense of 'I should travel sustainably because it's the right thing to do' — directly predict sustainable consumption behaviour, independent of (and bypassing) the conscious-intent step. Within the TPB pathway, attitude / subjective norms / perceived behavioural control all predict intention, which then predicts behaviour. But the VBN pathway operates differently: environmental awareness shapes altruistic and biospheric values, which activate personal norms, which directly drive behaviour without going through deliberate intent.

Why does the Vietnam-specific finding matter?

Most Western behavioural research treats personal norms as one input into deliberate intent, not as a separate pathway. The Vietnamese collectivist cultural context flips that. When social and personal moral expectations are strong, behaviour can flow directly from felt obligation rather than from explicit decision-making. This isn't unique to Vietnam — research in other collectivist East Asian and Southeast Asian markets shows similar patterns — but it's a meaningful contrast to the individualist-cultural research that dominates the field.

What are the practical implications for sustainable-tourism marketing in Vietnam?

Three big ones: (1) frame sustainable choices as social and moral duty rather than individual consumer preference — this matches how Vietnamese visitors actually decide; (2) emphasise community and family responsibility ('what would your children's generation say?') over individualistic appeal ('be the change you want to see'); (3) embed sustainability into experience design rather than offering it as an opt-in upgrade — moral-norm-driven behaviour responds better to default settings than to choice architecture.

Does this apply to international visitors too?

Less directly. The 549 respondents were Vietnamese tourists. Western visitors — particularly from highly individualist cultures (US, UK, Australia, much of Northern Europe) — operate more on the deliberate-intent pathway. The same behaviour-design lessons (frame as duty, embed as default) work better for collectivist-cultural visitors (Korea, Japan, parts of China, ASEAN). For Western visitors, traditional choice-architecture approaches remain most effective.