How and why does place identity affect residents’ spontaneous culture conservation in ethnic tourism community? A value co-creation perspective

Although residents’ value co-creation is critical for culture conservation and sustainable development in the ethnic tourism community, few studies have investigated the residents’ value co-creation mechanism. To fill this gap, this study proposes a conceptual model and tests the relationships among place identity, mediators (interaction attitude, responsibility, and innovation attitude), spontaneous culture conservation, and the moderators of self-efficacy using the latent-moderated structural equations approach. Results show that place identity is positively related to spontaneous culture conservation. In particular, only responsibility and innovation attitude mediate place identity’s effect on spontaneous culture conservation. In addition, self-efficacy moderates place identity’s indirect effect on spontaneous culture conservation through responsibility and innovation attitude. These findings help clarify the mechanism of residents’ value co-creation and promote the sustainable development of ethnic tourism communities.