The Impact of AI-Driven Green Marketing on Sustainable Tourism Behavior in Crisis Environments: The Case of Port Sudan

This empirical study looks at how green marketing driven by artificial intelligence (AI) affects sustainable tourism behavior in regions facing crisis, focusing on Port Sudan, Sudan, from 2023 to 2026. After national conflict caused a sudden influx of displaced people, local coastal ecosystems and vulnerable marine reserves — especially Sanganeb National Park — have faced severe strain. To explore potential interventions, we used an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design. We first did in-depth qualitative interviews with 10 leaders from the hospitality and environmental sectors, and then ran a field experiment with 284 visitors who were randomly assigned to either control or experimental groups. Our Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) shows that AI-driven green marketing has a strong, direct positive effect on sustainable tourism behavior (β = 0.42, p < 0.001). Additionally, digital trust in what the algorithms recommend partially mediates this connection (β = 0.24, p < 0.001). During the field experiment, visitors who saw personalized, real-time AI nudges followed ecological guidelines much better than those who only got standard green marketing messages. These results prove that flexible digital tools can work as cheap resilience mechanisms to encourage sustainable habits, even when local institutions and infrastructure face heavy constraints.