An Empirical Study On The Situational Factors Affecting Tourists’ Environmental Vandalism

Since the reform and opening up to the outside world,China’s tourism industry has gained rapid development and has become a national strategic pillar industry.However,in the tourism industry development and prosperity at the same time,tourist attractions are also facing many problems,one of which is the tourists’ environmental vandalism,such as trampling on the lawn,scribbling,littering.Although education by the television,newspapers,network and other forms of publicity can enhance the tourists’ environmental awareness,and to some extent weaken the environmental vandalism,but the recent effect is not significant,tourists’ environmental vandalism is still common.From the 1960s and 1970s the academic circles have studied the global environmental problems and public environmental behavior,but most of them focus on friendly and responsible environmental behavior and neglect environmental vandalism.The research on public environmental behavior is mostly based on the research paradigm of attitude determining behavior,situational elements as one of the factors that affect environmental attitudes and environmental behavior do not form a perfect system.The research in tourism field focuses on the results and governance of tourists’ environmental impact,lacking the research on tourists’ environmental behavior itself and its influencing factors,especially the constraints of situational factors on their behavior.To this end,this study will focus on the damage to the environment from the perspective of tourists’ environmental vandalism itself,and in accordance with the degree of behavior of environmental behavior classification method,from the high,medium and low levels to grasp tourists’ environmental vandalism.At the same time,the situational factors are taken as the starting point and divided into social situation,scenic spot situation,instantaneous situation and demographic characteristics according to the scope of action to construct a model of situational factors influencing tourists’ environmental vandalism.In this paper,the Xixi National Wetland Park was selected as the case land,and the first-hand data were obtained through field observation,shooting and questionnaires to complete the verification of the theoretical model.Through descriptive statistical analysis,independent sample T test,single factor analysis,correlation analysis and other methods to explore tourists’environmental vandalism and the impact of situational factors on environmental vandalism.The following basic conclusions are obtained:Firstly,scenic tourists’ environmental vandalism characterization.According to the questionnaire mean,tourists’ environmental vandalism is divided into three levels.Taking photos with landmark landscapes,relying on landmark landscapes,photographing in lawns or flowers,cutting corners,and picnicking on lawns are high environmental vandalism;Throwing rubbish everywhere,climbing up the landmark landscape,touching the display items,relying on the display items,sitting on the display tables and chairs to rest are medium environmental vandalism;Fishing,picking wetland animals and plants,to the lawn of the central picking,climbing branches to pick fruit are low environmental vandalism.Secondly,the segmentation of situational factors.According to the literature arrangement and the scenic spot observation,this article grasps the situational factors from the social situation,scenic spot situation,instantaneous situation and demographic characteristics.Social situational factors include interpersonal influences,environmental experiences,subjective norms,environmental education,and perceived behavioral control;Scenic situational factors involve five aspects:facilities,atmosphere,natural environment,personnel services and management policy;The instantaneous situational factors is grasped by other people’s pressure,location and other tourists’ influence;Demographic characteristics include gender,marital status,age,income,occupation,and education level.Thirdly,the influence of situational factors on tourists’ environmental vandalism.Through the statistical analysis of the collected data,situational factors are important factors affecting tourists’ environmental vandalism,and the impact of different situational factors on the environmental vandalism is different.In social situational factors,environmental education and perception behavior control affect three kinds of environmental vandalism,interpersonal influence affects medium and low environmental vandalism,environmental experiences affect high environmental vandalism and subjective norms affect low environmental vandalism.In scenic situational factors,the scenic atmosphere and natural environment affect medium and low environmental vandalism,personnel services affect low environmental vandalism,management policies affect medium environmental vandalism,but the facilities do not affect the environmental behavior.In instantaneous situational factors,other visitors will play a"demonstration effect" affecting three kinds of environmental vandalism,others’pressure influences high and low environmental vandalism,in different locations,tourists also have different behaviors to damage environment;Among the demographic characteristics,only marital status and educational level affect tourists’ environmental vandalism.There are some problems in current study,such as the scale of the existence is unknown,replacing behavior with willing.In order to correct these phenomena,the author visited XiXi Wetland for several times and designed a scale to measure the tourists’ environmental vandalism.At the same time,by reading the literature and the practical experience of the project,the author constructs some new situational factors,such as interpersonal influence,scenic facilities,natural environment,management policy,location,others pressure,and has been verified in the subsequent empirical research.In addition,on the basis of the verified model,this paper provides corresponding suggestions and countermeasures for environmental vandalism in scenic spots.This study studies the environmental vandalism from the perspective of situational factors,which is beneficial to make up for the lack of research on environmental vandalism and situational factors.In addition to the increase of typical cases,the follow-up research needs to make further research from expanding the the types of situational factors,environmental vandalism,increasing the research methods,and improving the collection and analysis of data.