Enhancing tourists’ recognition of the intangible cultural heritage values, strengthening their identification and protection behavior are important tasks for the development of intangible cultural heritage tourism nowadays. Thus, this article constructs a model of interaction-cognition-emotion-behavior, based on the emotional appraisal theory and interactive nature of tourism activities, taking Panxiu workshop in Huzhu Tu autonomous county as a case to analyze the influences of tourist-employee interaction (TEI) on tourists’ heritage protection behavior (HPB) in intangible culture heritage (ICH) tourism settings, including the mediating effects of tourists’ cognition of ICH values (CV) and identity of ICH (IICH). The findings as follows: ① Tourist-employee interaction quality (TEIQ) has a significant positive effect on tourists’ HPB, but the effect of tourist-employee interaction frequency (TEIF) is not significant. ② CV Plays a mediating role in the relationship among TEIQ and HPB, TEIF and HPB. ③ IICH plays a mediating role in the relationship between TEIQ and HPB, not significant between TEIF and HPB. ④ CV and IICH produce a positive chain mediation effect among TEIQ and HPB, TEIF and HPB. Extending the application of appraisal theory, this study enriches the research perspective of intangible cultural heritage tourism.