Market segmentation, activities and environmental behaviour in rural tourism

Abstract

Rural tourism has developed in recent decades with an increase in the activities available to tourists. In this article, the authors apply a cluster analysis for the segmentation of rural tourism in La Palma, Canary Islands. They consider the level of environmental attitudes of tourists as a variable explaining market segmentation. The results show that there is a large heterogeneity of market segments and that the traditional activity of agro-tourism represents a small share of the total market. The segments with a greater economic impact and producing greater tourist satisfaction are those in which tourists also exhibit higher levels of environmental behaviour. Thus, rural tourist destinations can improve their economic performance by focusing on those segments attracting tourists with higher environmental concern and by adopting policies that enhance the environmental profile of the segments.

Inferring customer heterogeneity for rural tourism: A latent class approach based on a best-worst choice modelling

“…Customers belonging to the second class are characterised by nature and outdoor activities. This segment is connected with ecotourism (Hearne and Salinas 2002;Hearne and Santos 2005;Chaminuka et al 2012;Fernández-Hernández et al 2016) and presents promising economic implications. Since their members are more concerned with environmental issues and sustainable development, they can generate a larger economic impact in these areas (Fernández--Hernández et al 2016;Eusébio et al 2017).…”

Tourism and Air Quality: Factors Influencing the Role of Air Quality in Visitors Travel Planning

“…Lastly, the question related to the importance of AQ in travel planning encompassed nine items divided into sustainable travel planning (e.g. Fernández-Hernández et al, 2016;Juvan & Dolnicar, 2016;Lee et al, 2013;Puhakka, 2011) and search for AQ information (e.g. Ballantyne et al, 2008;Zhang et al, 2015).…”

Segmenting Inbound Tourists Using Destination Image

“…Th e common tourism segmentation variables include geographic characteristics, tourist socio-demographic characteristics, travel behavior, and psychographics (Dolnicar, 2014). Th e use of psychographic and behavioral factors over the socio-demographic variables in segmenting the tourism market is preferred as the latter variables have been criticized basing on their lower ability in off ering an understanding of the market (Fernandez-Hernandez et al, 2016). Th e psychographic factors that can be used to segment the tourism market include travel motivations and destination image, while the behavior factors include trip characteristics and expenditure (Dolnicar, 2014).…”