Modeling tourists' environmental behaviors by structural equations: Towards tourism wise development in Birjand Fatemeh Jahanishakib 1* | Delaram Bakhshi 2 1 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran, Email: jahanishakib@birjand.ac.ir 2 MSc., Faculty of Environmental Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, Email: bakhshi.d14@gmail.com Article Info Abstract Article type: Research Article Article history: Received: February 2021 Accepted: August 2021 Corresponding author: jahanishakib@birjand.ac.ir Keywords: Perception Satisfaction Active involvement Attitude PLS-SEM Tourist Many of the serious today’s environmental problems are, directly or indirectly, caused by humans' irresponsible behavior. The current study, then, aimed at modeling the environmental behavior of tourists in destinations found in Birjand, Iran. The effects of independent constructs such as environmental perception (P), satisfaction (S), attitude (A), and active involvement (AI) on the dependent construct of the environmental behavior (EB) of tourists were investigated. The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used via SmartPLS 3 software. According to the results, the reliability of the model, and Cronbach's alpha values of latent and observant variables were acceptable (EB=0.851, P= 0.898, S=0.920, A=0.852, AI= 0.903); the combined reliability (rho or CR) for constructs ranged between 0.874 and 0.931. The average variance extracted (AVE) for EB, P, S, A, and AI were measured at 0.385, 0.555, 0.530, 0.530, and 0.595, respectively. The correlation between latent variables, according to Fornell and Larker method showed that the A and AI constructs were more positively correlated with each other. As a whole, the results showed that perception has a significant and positive effect on the tourists’ environmental behavior in natural and historical destinations. This is while no significant correlation was found between satisfaction, attitude, and active involvement. This research provided a scientific basis for tourism management and offered some suggestions that can be useful for formulating policies, and wise tourism development in the context of environmental protection in relevant administrative departments. Cite this article: Fatemeh Jahanishakib & Delaram Bakhshi. 2021. Modeling tourists' environmental behaviors by structural equations: Towards tourism wise development in Birjand. Environmental Resources Research, 9 (2), 183-198. DOI: 10.22069/IJERR.2021.19205.1342 © The Author(s). DOI: 10.22069/IJERR.2021.19205.1342 Publisher: Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources Introduction To claim that environmental problems are soley caused by natural changes means to disrespect other influential factors that play important roles. In fact, many of these problems are directly or indirectly caused by humans' irresponsible behavior in the environment. In other words, man is considered an influential factor and a victim of this crisis. Today, the main concern of international organizations and scholars is to prevent environmental problems and their upward trend. Many environmentalists believe that to find strategies that help reduce the effects of human-related problems, they have to move from physical and ecological