Why Do People Travel to Nature Based Tourism Destinations?

Why Do People Travel to Nature Based Tourism Destinations?

Nature-based tourism destinations provide tourists low density tourism experience. Evidence shows that perceptions of crowding are one of the determinators for visitors to nature-based tourism areas. Also, marketing factors, such as perceptions of service quality, are important to influence visitors’ subsequent behaviors. The perceptions of crowding and service quality are supposed to affect visitors’ behavioral intentions. On the other hand, taking from the perspectives of cultural anthropology and service marketing, I argue that behavioral intentions are also influenced by values. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to test a behavioral intentions model of nature-based tourism visitors that include three constructs: values (cultural anthropology factor), perceptions of service quality (service marketing factors), and perceptions of crowding (natural resource tourism factor). In 2007-2008, the visitors to Taroko National Park in Taiwan were surveyed. I used an on-site sampling approach. Overall, I obtained 1080 usable questionnaires. The results showed that values and service quality dimensions as well as crowding and behavioral intentions indices demonstrated acceptable reliability of measures. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the predictive power of values dimensions, service quality dimensions and crowding index on behavioral intentions index. The result showed that the multiple regression model was significant at the 0.001 level, and the adjusted R-square equaled 0.50. The findings provide implications for visitor management and research in nature-based tourism.