Nature tourists’ response to ecolabels in Oulanka PAN Park, Finland

Abstract

As the awareness of environmental problems caused by tourism has increased, various international initiatives, ecolabels and certification programmes, such as Protected Area Network (PAN) Parks in Europe, have been introduced to promote sustainable tourism. This paper examines nature tourists’ environmental values and perceptions of ecolabels: (1) how familiar are tourists with tourism ecolabels and certifications, and how do they respond to them, (2) how are tourists’ environmental attitudes related to their beliefs on tourism ecolabels and travelling preferences and (3) how is tourists’ travelling behaviour related to their awareness of ecolabels and their environmental attitudes? The research material, 273 surveys, was collected with an onsite survey for visitors to PAN Parks-certified Oulanka National Park located in northeastern Finland. Despite the low awareness, tourists expressed a positive attitude towards ecolabels and certifications as they considered them necessary and wanted to have more information about them and to increase their visibility. Few differences were found with respect to environmental attitudes, travelling behaviour or demographic characteristics. Although real market benefits may not be created in the short run, the results support ecolabel development and highlight the need to combine performance (‘green’) and process (‘grey’) criteria in environmental certifications.

Keywords:

• ecolabels
• certifications
• PAN Parks
• environmental attitudes
• nature-based tourism
• sustainable tourism

Acknowledgements

We cordially thank Tiina Ylimaunu for planning the survey and collecting data from Finnish tourists and Saša Dolinšek for collecting data from international tourists. We also thank the respondents who took part in this study. This study was funded by the Academy of Finland (project no. 114490).

Notes

See www.panparks.org