Environmental attitudes and adventure tourism motivations

Abstract

The natural environment plays an important role in adventure tourism. Specific environments are often necessary for certain types of adventure tourism and unique settings are seen to enhance the value of adventure tourism experiences. Given the importance of the environment in adventure tourism, the interplay between humans and the environment in this context should be given further attention. Although much research has examined the physical environmental impacts caused by specific activities considered adventure tourism, the impact of the environment on the behavior of adventure tourists has only briefly been touched upon. Environmental attitudes are said to be an indicator of environmentally conscious behavior. In the tourism context, however, conflicting results have been found as to whether or not environmental attitudes drive consumer behavior. Therefore, the manner in which environmental attitudes, using the New Environmental Paradigm scale, influence the motivations of participants in adventure tourism is investigated using the case of commercial adventure tourism in South Africa. The results show that the environmental attitudes of this group of tourists were relatively low and that the links between environmental attitudes and adventure tourism motivations are relatively weak. Therefore, the impact of general environmental attitudes on adventure tourist behavior is questionable.