Tourists’ Environmentally Responsible Behavior in Response to Climate Change

Abstract

Tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) in response to climate change is a topic that is becoming increasingly important during the Covid-19 pandemic as people’s values change. Tourism is facing an economic downturn and now is the time to prepare for a new upswing. Meanwhile, a new narrative is needed in response to climate change, as tourism is a net polluter of the environment. That is why tourist ERB studies are becoming more and more relevant in the world, including Latvia, too. The objective of this paper is to determine the ERB of tourists in response to climate change. The questionnaire included 30 research questions and generated 383 answers from respondents from the Vidzeme region of Latvia. Several research methods were used in the study: descriptive and correlation method, KMO and BARLETT’S, Cohen’s Kappa and Cronbach’s alpha tests, Exploratory factor analysis and Principal Components Analysis. The study found that the factors attitude, behaviour, awareness, control, environmental knowledge, experience and values influence tourists’ ERB; however, environmental knowledge and experience show a slight advantage. To direct the continuation of the research towards the creation of the tourism ERB model in Latvia.