Study On The Relationships Among Eco-tourism Involvement, Place Attachment And Environmentally Responsible Behavior

Because of the deterioration of living environment and seeking for the better quality of life, eco-tourism has experienced a booming development in China, the influx of millions tourists makes the eco-tourism destination in pressure in terms of environment protection, in order to relieve such a pressure, managers of eco-tourism destination take actions like penalty, raise ticket price, minimize the area tourist could hang out, and set numerous signs to remind tourists not to damage the environment. However, these measures do not work well and destroy visitors’tourism experience. This study focuses on the cultivation of Environmentally Responsible Behavior (ERB), and explores how the ERB emerges by studying the relationships between eco-tourism involvement (with three dimensions of attraction, centrality and self-expression), place attachment (with two dimensions of place dependence and place identity), and ERB (with two dimensions of general ERB and specific ERB).Firstly, this study reviewed related literatures to propose hypotheses and to build the model, then, basing on the literature review, interview and pretest, the questionnaire was developed; the questionnaire survey was conducted in Xixi Wetland National Park and lasted for a week,243valid questionnaires were collected, after analyzing the data with SPSS20.0and Amos17.0, results indicate that:1) Attraction is the significant and positive predicator of place dependence and specific ERB, the Standardized Regression Weights (SRW) are0.393and0.190; centrality significantly and positively predicates place identity, the SRW is0.517; self-expression is the significant and positive predicator of place dependence, the SRW is0.336; place dependence significantly and positively predicates general ERB and specific ERB simultaneously, the SRW are0.488and0.468; place identity significantly and positively predicates general ERB, the SRW is0.177; attraction indirectly and positively impacts ERB through the mediating effect of place dependence.2) There are no significant difference between eco-tourists with different age, gender, profession, income and education background in terms of attraction, centrality, self-expression, place dependence, place identity, general ERB and specific ERB.Basing on above conclusions, how to cultivate and attract eco-tourists with ERB is also discussed.