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Environmental attitudes and adventure tourism motivations

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Abstract

The natural environment plays an important role in adventure tourism. Specific environments are often necessary for certain types of adventure tourism and unique settings are seen to enhance the value of adventure tourism experiences. Given the importance of the environment in adventure tourism, the interplay between humans and the environment in this context should be given further attention. Although much research has examined the physical environmental impacts caused by specific activities considered adventure tourism, the impact of the environment on the behavior of adventure tourists has only briefly been touched upon. Environmental attitudes are said to be an indicator of environmentally conscious behavior. In the tourism context, however, conflicting results have been found as to whether or not environmental attitudes drive consumer behavior. Therefore, the manner in which environmental attitudes, using the New Environmental Paradigm scale, influence the motivations of participants in adventure tourism is investigated using the case of commercial adventure tourism in South Africa. The results show that the environmental attitudes of this group of tourists were relatively low and that the links between environmental attitudes and adventure tourism motivations are relatively weak. Therefore, the impact of general environmental attitudes on adventure tourist behavior is questionable.

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Notes

  1. Converted from a 4-point Liket scale.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies, University of Johannesburg, P.O. Box 524, Kingsway Ave, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2006, South Africa

    Julia Kathryn Giddy

  2. Department of Geosciences, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

    Julia Kathryn Giddy & Nigel Leigh Webb

Authors
  1. Julia Kathryn Giddy
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  2. Nigel Leigh Webb
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Correspondence to Julia Kathryn Giddy.

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There is no conflict of interest with respect to the authors and content of this manuscript.

Ethical standard

Participation in the survey used in this study was completely voluntary and only includes data from participants in activities over the age of 18. Ethical clearance was given for the research project from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Please liaise with the corresponding author (Dr. Julia Giddy—juliag@uj.ac.za) if you would like a copy of the ethical clearance certificate. A consent statement was given at the beginning of each survey.

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Giddy, J.K., Webb, N.L. Environmental attitudes and adventure tourism motivations. GeoJournal 83, 275–287 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-017-9768-9

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