Journal of Environmental Management 311 (2022) 114868 0301-4797/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Research article Is walking or riding your bike when a tourist different? Applying VAB theory to better understand active transport behavior Myung Ja Kim a, * , C. Michael Hall b, c, d a The College of Hotel & Tourism Management, Kyung Hee University, 26 Kyungheedae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, 02447, Republic of Korea b Department of Management, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, 8140, New Zealand c Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden d Department of Service Management and Services Studies, Lund University, Helsingborg, Sweden, Centre for Research and Innovation in Tourism, Taylor’s University, Subang Jaya, Malaysia A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Sustainability Sustainable transport Walking Cycling Value-attitude-behavior (VAB) theory Sustainable tourism ABSTRACT Active transport (walking and biking) has signifcant environmental, health, and social benefts. Despite the importance of active transport, theoretically framed research has not suffciently considered what makes con- sumers walk or bike based on activity types, particularly in an Asian context. This is an important topic as it helps provides a basis for better targeted marketing and promotion to encourage greater public engagement with active transport. To fll this knowledge gap, this work applied the value-attitude-behavior (VAB) theory to understand walkers and bikers’ behaviors in comparing tourism, leisure, and work activity. Results indicate that value on attitude has the greatest infuence, followed by personal, and then social norm. Behavior for active transport is signifcantly infuenced by personal norm, followed by attitude and social norm. Interestingly, from the three types of activities, the tourism group has the strongest relationship of value and attitude and the highest pre- diction for attitude and behavior. 1. Introduction The promotion of public engagement with active transport, primarily walking and cycling, is of increasing interest to planners, policy-makers, and researchers because of its positive contributions to human and environmental health (Choi and Kim, 2021; Han et al., 2020; Herr- mann-Lunecke et al., 2020; Kato and Progano, 2017; Macmillan et al., 2020; Nigg and Nigg, 2021). Walking and biking are an important part of the tourist and leisure experience and a signifcant element of sus- tainable mobility (Goeft and Alder, 2001; Hall and Ram, 2019). Active transport users’ value and attitude are very important factors for their walking and biking behavior (Arroyo et al., 2020; García et al., 2019a). Understanding values and attitudes towards active transport provides a basis for the promotion of walking and biking for personal benefts as well as broader contributions to place-making and sustainability (Audrey et al., 2015; National Public Health Partnership [NPHP], 2001; Pucher et al., 2010; Riley et al., 2013). The infuence of values and attitudes for engaging in different types of transport is essential for understanding travel behaviour, including adoption of active transport as a means of travel (Piatkowski et al., 2019; Wen et al., 2005). Research has well documented the appropriateness of value-attitude-behavior (VAB) theory in various sustainable tourism settings (e.g., Kiatkawsin and Han, 2017; Kim and Hall, 2021; Kim et al., 2020). However, despite the signifcance of active transport and its potential contribution to sustainable tourism (Hall et al., 2017), studies have largely overlooked using VAB theory to explain active transport behavior. In addition, only limited research on walking and biking has been conducted that compares the different contexts in which the ac- tivity occurs: tourism, leisure, or work groups, especially in an Asian context. Such research is signifcant as it may help answer a basic question with respect to locations seeking to encourage increased active transport, which is the extent to which participating in walking and biking may be different depending on the context, i.e. tourism, leisure and work. For example, destinations are increasingly wanting tourists to walk or cycle at destinations, but specifc data on tourist active transport is usually not available so therefore generic active transport data is used in the development of behavioral interventions and promotional cam- paigns (Hall et al., 2017). However, such an approach may not be appropriate given that the behavioural dimensions may be quite different for each activity type (Hall et al., 2017). Therefore, the purpose * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: silver@khu.ac.kr (M.J. Kim), michael.hall@canterbury.ac.nz (C.M. Hall). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114868 Received 16 December 2021; Received in revised form 28 February 2022; Accepted 6 March 2022