Zaiton Samdin, Siti Intan Nurdiana Wong Abdullah, Alfred Khaw, Thanam Subramaniam
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引用次数: 26
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 outbreak has caused a global turmoil which restricted movement and consequently, diminishing domestic and international travel. One that is severely affected is ecotourism in National Parks, that involves visiting fragile, pristine and undisturbed natural areas. One of the major concerns for ecotourists in destination decision-making is travel risk that could affect their safety. This study aims to examine their risk perception and how it affects the behaviour of ecotourists in Taman Negara National Park, Malaysia. The data was collected from 406 respondents and analysed using structural equation modelling. It is concluded that risk perception affects tourists’ decision-making, whereby health and safety information preference is the strongest predictor, and media’s influence has a very significant connection. This study has the potential of contributing to the management of ecotourism destinations in times of crisis. It also fills the literature gap on risk perceptions of ecotourists’ during the COVID-19 pandemic.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Ecotourism seeks to advance the field by examining the social, economic, and ecological aspects of ecotourism at a number of scales, and including regions from around the world. Journal of Ecotourism welcomes conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research, particularly where it contributes to the dissemination of new ideas and models of ecotourism planning, development, management, and good practice. While the focus of the journal rests on a type of tourism based principally on natural history - along with other associated features of the man-land nexus - it will consider papers which investigate ecotourism as part of a broader nature based tourism, as well as those works which compare or contrast ecotourism/ists with other forms of tourism/ists.