Millennial Tourists’ Environmentally Sustainable Behavior Towards a Natural Protected Area: An Integrative Framework

Abstract

In the last few years, natural protected areas have been facing great challenges and degradation around the world. Among this, environmental sustainability has become a priority to create harmony between tourists and nature. Tourists visiting protected areas are becoming progressively more concerned regarding the environment. Moreover, the United Nations (UN) “Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” have highlighted the potential role of young tourists to contribute to sustainable tourism. However, very few studies have focused on tourists’ environmentally sustainable behavior towards natural protected areas. To fill the existing gap in the literature, this study aims to provide a theoretical framework that includes environmental sustainability awareness (ESA) in measuring millennial tourists’ environmentally sustainable behavior (ESB). Thus, this study delivers an integrated approach based on the value-belief-norm (VBN) theory and the concept of the new ecological paradigm (NEP) towards protected areas. A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted from one of the protected areas located in the north of Sichuan province of China, and 511 responses were obtained for statistical analysis. Results of the structural statistical analysis showed that the unified model includes a satisfactory level of predictive power for tourists’ ESB, which was superior to existing theories and concepts. The findings also revealed that all proposed relationships of the variables were significant and identified the positive influence of environmental sustainability awareness in generating the ESB. This study contributes towards sustainable tourism development and the conservation of protected areas, with several practical implications for local authorities in terms of millennial participation.

Does a National Park Enhance the Environment-Friendliness of Tourists as an Ecotourism Destination?

“…Accordingly, scholars have pursued the development of a reliable and valid measurement to evaluate individuals' environmental attitudes. The NEP is widely used as a dimensional measurement of environmental attitudes by measuring the relationship between humans and nature [87]. Based on the above, the primary purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between the NEP, environmental conservation and environment-friendly behavioral intention perceived by visitors to national parks in South Korea.…”

Survey dataset for the perceived consciousness towards environmental sustainability by undergraduate students

“…Environmental sustainability is a very articulated and complex concept that is widely discussed in many disciplines and many streams of the literature [1] . Increased awareness toward environmental sustainability manifests and leads to the adoption of the concepts to address environmental challenges, which played a key role in the birth of environmental movements [2] . Tourism is dependent upon the environment for much of its well-being [ 1 , 3 ].…”

Long-Term Impact of Study Abroad on Sustainability-Related Attitudes and Behaviors

“…Once people are aware of the adverse consequences of environmental issues, they should ascribe responsibility, which in turn may motivate changes in behaviors and personal norms in order to alleviate environmental problems (Stern, et al 1995). The VBN model was then adopted and empirically tested in the education for sustainable development literature e.g., [26], the educational tourism literature e.g., [4,11], as well as the sustainable tourism literature e.g., [21,27].…”