Purpose <p>This study aims to assess the influence of perceived destination intellectual capital on tourists’ pro-sustainable behavior, with destination personality as a mediator and the ascription of responsibility as a moderator, drawing on situated cognition theory and norm activation theory in the context of domestic leisure tourism.</p> Research design/methodology/approach <p>The data for this study were collected using homogeneous purposive sampling from 549 Generation Z domestic leisure tourists residing in Pakistan, and analyzed using PLS-SEM.</p> Findings <p>The results indicate that perceived destination intellectual capital has a significant positive impact on tourists’ pro-sustainable behavior directly and indirectly through destination personality. Although the ascription of responsibility positively influences pro-sustainable behavior, its interaction effect with destination personality is negative, indicating that destination personality’s influence is lower among tourists who already have a preexisting sense of responsibility. Hence, ascription of responsibility is a buffering moderator that can be explained through the interpretive lens of self-determination theory.</p> Originality value <p> This study is among the earliest to empirically demonstrate that perceived destination intellectual capital shapes destination personality, which, in turn, influences tourists’ pro-sustainable behavior. Second, the study reveals that tourists with high ascribed responsibility are less influenced by destination personality, indicating that strong internal moral drivers can dampen the impact of external destination factors influencing tourists’ sustainable behavior. Finally, this study focuses on Gen Z to add a generational perspective to the theory of tourists’ sustainable behavior with actionable implications for destination managers.</p>