Evaluating the Environmental Literacy of Tourists Visiting in Arid Regions (Case Study: Qom city)

Abstract

Contemporary environmental crisis is the result of human misunderstanding or ignorance in the world. Having thought about various environmental crises that human beings have undergone, we understand that what exacerbates these crises is ecological illiteracy, which causes a lot of problems in a society. Therefore, reforming environmental crisis, according to the environmentalists, is dependent on reforming human instruction and changing the attitude, insight and knowledge of human about his own destiny and his environment. This study aims at acquainting with knowledge, attitude and environmental behaviors of tourists visiting the arid city of Qom. 386 people were selected as the sample of the study via Cochran formula, 200 questionnaires were distributed among domestic tourists, and 186 questionnaires among foreign tourists. The research utilized a researcher-made questionnaire and face validity and Cronbach's alpha coefficient were used for confirming its validity and its reliability (0.762). SPSS software was used for descriptive analysis and one-sample t-test, and AMOS software was used for structural equation modeling. T-test results with a significant level less than 0.05 shows that tourists have environmental value, behavior, attitude and knowledge. Also, there is a significant correlation between these variables. The factor loadings are 0.96 between environmental knowledge and environmental attitudes of tourists, 0.65 between environmental knowledge and environmental values of tourists and 0.53 between environmental attitudes and environmental values of tourists, and reciprocal relationship is confirmed at the significance level of 0.000. It can be concluded that strengthening the environmental attitude of tourists will affect their environmental values. Strengthening educational systems and informing people can lead to favorable and sustainable behaviors in tourism communities.