251. The mediating effect of healing tourism consumption on youth's perceived social support for mental health

Abstract Background Healing tourism, as a positive psychological intervention strategy, can improve individual mental health through emotion regulation, cognitive reshaping, and social interaction. However, existing research largely focuses on the direct impact of tourism experiences on subjective well-being, with insufficient attention paid to the internal mechanisms of mental health in young people, particularly the mediating role of perceived social support. Therefore, this study explores the impact of healing tourism consumption on the mental health of young people and systematically verifies the mediating effect of perceived social support in this relationship, aiming to provide empirical evidence for youth mental health intervention and tourism management policies. Methods This study employed a combination of cross-sectional questionnaires and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis. A total of 420 young participants aged 18-30 years were recruited, including university students and young professionals. Participants were categorized into high-spending, medium-spending, and low-spending groups based on the frequency and type of their healing tourism spending over the past 12 months. Mental health was assessed using the Mental Health Inventory (MHI-5), and perceived social support was measured using the Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS). Control variables included gender, age, income level, and place of residence. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 27 and AMOS 26 to examine the significance of direct, indirect, and mediating effects. Results Descriptive statistics showed that the mental health level of the high-consumption group (MHI-5: 74.3 ± 8.5) was significantly higher than that of the medium-consumption group and the low-consumption group, with a significant difference between groups (p<.001). Perceived social support also showed an increasing trend: the PSSS of the high-consumption group was 68.5 ± 7.4, the PSSS of the medium-consumption group was 61.9 ± 7.8, and the PSSS of the low-consumption group was 55.2 ± 8.1 (p<.001). SEM analysis further showed that the standardized coefficient of the direct effect of therapeutic tourism consumption on youth mental health was 0.42 (p<.01), and the mediating effect of perceived social support was 0.18 (p<.01), accounting for 30.0% of the total effect. Therefore, perceived social support plays a partial mediating role in the process of therapeutic tourism consumption improving mental health; that is, tourism consumption indirectly promotes youth mental health by enhancing perceived social support. Furthermore, between-group effect analysis showed that perceived social support accounted for 34% of the mediating effect on improved emotional stability, indicating that social interaction and emotional support are important mechanisms by which therapeutic tourism improves mental health. Discussion Healing tourism consumption can significantly improve the mental health of young people, with perceived social support playing a partial mediating role in this process. Tourism activities indirectly improve mental health by enhancing social interaction and emotional support, significantly impacting emotional stability and psychological vitality. This finding provides empirical evidence for the theoretical value of healing tourism in youth mental health intervention and offers some reference for policymakers and tourism managers in designing psychologically beneficial tourism projects. Future research could combine longitudinal designs and physiological and psychological indicators to further verify the long-term effects and mechanisms of healing tourism.