Digital Pathways to Sustainability: Eco-Travel Apps and Gen Z’s Eco-Friendly Travel Behaviors

Abstract

This study examines the interrelations among the perception of Gen Z towards tourism’s negative environmental impacts, adoption intentions of eco-friendly travel apps, and attitudes towards the value of these apps, as well as the mediating roles of adoption intention and attitude towards the value of eco-friendly travel apps in the relations between tourism’s perceived negative environmental impacts and sustainable travel behavior. Methodologically, this study extends the Theory of Planned Behavior by incorporating adoption intention and attitude towards eco-friendly travel apps as mediators between perception and sustainable behavior. This integrated model offers a novel application of TPB within digital sustainability contexts. This study reveals that awareness of tourism’s environmental consequences positively impacts the intention to use eco-friendly travel apps and fosters sustainable travel behaviors. These findings highlight and underscore the role of attitudes and technological adoption in sustainable tourism. This study offers some recommendations for future researchers to explore whether the current findings are consistent across different cultural contexts as well as for practitioners to make several practical recommendations to encourage sustainable travel behaviors among young travelers. © 2025 by the authors.