Abstract

In recent years, many tour operators have entered to the ecotourism market aiming at the trend of ecotourism. In combination of local ecological and environmental resources, these tour operators have promoted a series of themed ecotourism paths and activities to attract tourists from different places. This study conducted literature review and empirical research to explore the influences of consumers’ tourism involvement, tourism values, perception of ecotourism and affection toward ecotourism on attitude toward ecotourism, perceived value of ecotourism, willingness of consumers and actual ecotourism action. Furthermore, association models were established, and the differences on the association models of tourist groups with different tourism frequencies were compared. Convenience sampling was used to survey the consumers who had participated in ecotourism. A total of 787 valid samples were collected. Based on tourism frequency, the respondents were divided into three groups, namely high frequency, medium frequency and low frequency, and the group models were compared. The results showed that (1) the influence of affection toward ecotourism on perceived value of ecotourism is the most significant among the four independent variables in the three tourism groups; (2) for all three tourism groups, tourism involvement has significantly negative influences on the paths of attitude toward ecotourism, and the influence of high-frequency tourism group is the highest; (3) tourism values of the high-frequency tourism group have a significantly negative influence on the path of perceived value of ecotourism while medium-frequency and low-frequency tourism groups have no significant influence; (4) in the medium-frequency tourism group, the affection toward ecotourism has a significantly positive influence on the path of attitude toward ecotourism, and the influence of this group is the highest while high-frequency and low-frequency groups have no significant influence; (5) for all three tourism groups, perceived value of ecotourism has a significantly positive influence on the path of attitude toward ecotourism and the influence of high-frequency tourism group is the highest.

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