Resident and visitor perceptions of island tourism: green sea turtle ecotourism in Penghu Archipelago, Taiwan

Abstract

This study compares residents and visitors on the island of Wang-An in Penghu archipelago (Taiwan) in terms of four variables (ecotourism perception, environmental attitude, ecotourism behavior, local environmental knowledge). Results show that island visitors are positioned closer to the deep end of a shallow-deep spectrum on a few ecotourism characteristics such as stronger environmental commitment, smaller groups, and more personal experience. With a fuzzy cluster analysis reducing the four variables to two dimensions (ecotourism literacy, environmental familiarity and concern), the two clusters of island residents and visitors are found to overlap greatly with a noticeable divergence in the dimension of environmental familiarity and concern as a result of residents' better local environmental knowledge. Residents express greater approval of economic development on some items of the environmental attitude subscale. It is recommended that visitors have longer tours that increase interaction with residents to learn more about the local environment while serving as educators of ecotourism.

Environmental and Economic Concerns in Residents’ Attitudes in Punta del Este (Uruguay)

“…One of the most common cases is community concern [53,71,73], which is understood as a fear for the well-being of the local population and its future and suggests an increase in various residents' perceptions. Less studied are social concern [39], economic concern, and environmental concern [39,44], which are all understood as the fear toward impacts of a particular type. Because the economy is the counterpoint to concerns about negative impacts on other aspects of society, economic concern must be taken into account as a counterpoint to environmental concern (which is increasingly important in Western society).…”

Island Ecological Tourism: Construction of Indicators of Tourist Service System of Penghu National Scenic Area

“…Island ecotourism is one of the important attractions of Penghu, which managed by Penghu National Scenic Area, known as the archipelago area of Taiwan. It has received destination recognition for its island ecotourism, which involved in fish, sea turtle, coral reef, intertidal zone, seashore plant ecology, migratory birds, and basalt cliff [5]. From May 2003, Penghu Fireworks Festival had held by Penghu county government, it became a magnet for tourists visiting Penghu.…”

“…With the rapid tourism development, excess tourist activities not only destroyed the island's ecosystem but debased the quality of ecotourism [5,15,28,44]. Thus, in order to sustainable ecotourism development, constructing the ecotourism service indicator system is very important.…”

“…However, when analyzing the aforementioned elements, the good ecotourism features concerns arose: (a) based on the nature and culture; (b) focus on the environmental education; (c) realize the awareness of environmental protection; (d) shared benefit for the community and stakeholder; (e) constructed the relationship among environment, society, economic and tourists. [5,7,28,36] It including the carrying capacity of the resources and provide the benefits for local community and industries [39]. Consequently, in order to keep the ecotourism sustainable development, it must undergo careful planning and management [1].…”

“…Hsieh, Park, and Huh (2016) compared between local resident's and tourist's attitude to point out the positive economic and cultural resource will upgrade the tourism development [17]. Moreover, Chao and Chao (2017) argued Wang-An islands, known for valuable green turtle resource that discuss the visitors need to closely enhance the environmental concern, deep experience activities, and small-scale tours while the local resident needs to learn more about their environmental knowledge to become the interpreter [5]. For the local community, Yu, Chu, and Tsai (2011) argued that the local communities need to protect the environmental resource and increase deeply the tourist image [46].…”