Marine Parks as a Destination Choice of Millennial Tourists: The Role of Consumption Values and Responsible Environmental Behaviour

Abstract

Marine parks are popular ecotourism holiday destinations besides being an important conservational zone for the marine life. The sustainability of marine parks is highly dependent on the visitors’ behaviour, especially millennials who are an imperative tourist segment that are implied to be supportive of the green movement. Personal consumption values have yet to be widely used to predict tourists’ environmental behaviour and especially on their destination decision. Furthermore, there have been contradicting findings between the tourists’ consumption values and their environmental behaviour when visiting ecotourism destinations. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the influence of personal consumption values on responsible environmental behaviour, and the mediating effect of responsible environmental behaviour between these values and their destination choice. A face-to-face survey was conducted among 409 local and international millennial tourists at the top three marine parks in Malaysia using purposive sampling. The data was analysed using partial least squares-structural equation modelling method to determine the relationships between the tourists’ consumption values, responsible environmental behaviour and destination choice. The result of this study confirms that personal consumption values did have a significant but weak influence on tourists’ pro-environmental behaviours. It further confirms that millennial tourists who are environmentally responsible prefers to visit marine park islands as their holiday destination. This study highlights the importance of attracting the right tourist segment to promote ecotourism destinations. Keywords: Consumption Values, Destination Choice, Ecotourism, Marine Parks, Responsible Environmental Behaviour, Sustainability