Muṭāli̒āt-i Mudīriyyat-i Gardishgarī (Jun 2013)
The Gap between Attitude, Knowledge and Environmental Behavior of Tourists
Abstract
Due to the intensity of the impact that tourists’ environmental behavior has on the destination environments, this group of people are placed among those groups who are studied from their environmental behavior point of view. This article with a structured vision, surveys the effects of mental and visional variables on the en-behavior of two types of tourists. The study was performed through a combination of desk and field studies – using questionnaire. Due to the lack of an accurate sampling framework for domestic tourists, by conducting a discovery work, 350 tourists were selected, where 200 of them belonged to Chalus statistical population and 150 individuals belonged to Isfahan. Collected data were assessed through descriptive and inferential statistical methods with the help of SPSS. According to the findings of Pearson correlation test, there is significant and direct relationship between tourists' en-behavior and their environmental values, understanding of environmental benefits, cultural imagination, and cultural motivation. While no significant relationship was seen between environmental knowledge and tourists' en-behavior. According to the path analysis, imagination of place with a beta value of 0.75 has the greatest effect on the dependent variable of the study. In the second rank the variable of understanding of environmental benefits with a Beta value of 0.59 affects directly and indirectly the tourists' en-behaviors. Environmental motivation and environmental values with Beta scores of 0.35 and 0.29 respectively have significant direct effects on the dependent variable. In regression analysis of the paths, the environmental knowledge variable was removed from the model due to the insignificant obtained Beta. The mentioned factors totally explained 60% of the changes in tourists' en behaviors.
