Residents’ heritage responsibility behavior (HRB) impacts the sustainable development of cultural heritage tourism destinations. This paper first employed partial least squares–structural equation modeling to examine the psychological mechanism by which social embeddedness influences residents’ HRB. Then, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis was used to examine the complex causal effects of social embeddedness on residents’ HRB. The results indicated that different dimensions of social embeddedness affected residents’ heritage responsibility but that the psychological mechanism of the impacts on residents’ HRB was different for each dimension. Social relationship embeddedness and policy embeddedness were the main factors influencing residents’ HRB. Many factors were involved in the formation of residents’ HRB and irresponsible heritage behavior, and the formation paths were independent of each other rather than being entire opposites of each other, which reflected the heterogeneity and complexity. This research provided a more comprehensive understanding of heritage responsibility and practical guidance for heritage managers.
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