Does Environmental Interpretation Impact Public Ecological Flow Experience and Responsible Behavior? A Case Study of Potatso National Park, China.

Abstract

Being responsible for ensuring nature preservation, environmental interpretation raises people’s awareness of nature preservation as a form of public service, and enhance their environmentally responsible behavior. Based on the flow theory, this study proposes a conceptual model of environmental interpretation impacts on visit motivation, ecological experience, environmental attitudes, and environmental behaviors. Selecting the users (visitors) of environmental interpretation at Potatso National Park in Shangri-La, Yunnan Province, China, we obtained 568 valid questionnaires and used Amos software to analyze a structural equation model to verify the model. The results indicate that the environmental interpretation plays a significant role in enriching the public’s ecological experience, which is an intermediary variable in which visiting motivation influences environmental attitudes and guides environmentally responsible behavior. The research suggests that national parks should strengthen the environmental interpretation facilities experiential and available, and adjust the configuration of the existing interpretation media in the three-dimensional structure of theme, space, and time, considering the motivation of the public visits, enriching ecological experience, and inspiring service details.