A Standardized Field-Survey Protocol for Visitor Conservation Willingness and Self-Reported Responsible Travel Behavior at Longmen Grottoes

A standardized field-survey protocol for measuring visitor conservation willingness and responsible travel behavior at the Longmen Grottoes has been developed to generate robust behavioral data without disrupting site operations. The protocol integrates rigorous methodologies including public-area visitor interception, anonymous electronic questionnaires, eligibility screening, attention checks, daily raw-data locking, predefined exclusion rules, construct scoring, reliability testing, confirmatory factor analysis, regression and path-model diagnostics, sensitivity checks, and reproducibility archiving. It assesses multiple constructs such as heritage knowledge, perceived value, place attachment, pro-environmental message quality, crowding perceptions, facility support, conservation attitudes, and responsible travel behavior. Implementation demonstrated the protocol's effectiveness in producing analyzable datasets with auditable exclusions, acceptable measurement diagnostics, and interpretable model outputs. This approach is adaptable to other heritage settings, providing a transparent framework for collecting visitor-behavior evidence that supports conservation priorities.

Jia, H., Zhang, P., & Cheng, S. (2026). A Standardized Field-Survey Protocol for Visitor Conservation Willingness and Self-Reported Responsible Travel Behavior at Longmen Grottoes. Journal of Visualized Experiments, (234). https://doi.org/10.3791/72829