Environmental attitudes and behaviour of birdwatchers: a missing link

ABSTRACT

Birdwatching is one of the fastest growing sectors of ecotourism. Managing this nature-based activity requires understanding birdwatchers’ attitudes and behaviour towards the natural environment. This paper proposes assessing these attitudes and the link to behavioural intentions by combining the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) with a criterion-based segmentation method, the chi-squared automatic interaction detector (CHAID). This methodology was applied through a survey questionnaire to birdwatchers in the Ria Formosa Natural Park, a wetland located in South Portugal. The amount birdwatchers were willing to pay for an improvement in the environmental quality of the site, a behavioural intention variable, was used as the criterion in the CHAID analysis. Two birdwatcher segments willing to pay above average were identified and labelled as ‘environmental stewards’ and ‘birdwatching fans’. A key result that emerged from our study is that the NEP score is not a significant predictor of the willingness to pay for environmental improvement in the CHAID analysis. Hence, there is a missing link, as pro-environmental attitudes do not translate into pro-environmental behavioural intentions.

KEYWORDS:

• Birdwatching
• environmental attitudes
• environmental behaviour
• New Environmental Paradigm
• CHAID

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation under projects UIDB/ 04020/2020 and UID/ECO/04007/2020.

Notes on contributors

Pedro Pintassilgo

Pedro Pintassilgo holds a PhD in Economics from the New University of Lisbon. He is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve, Portugal, where he got the Aggregation title. He is also Director of the Master in Tourism Economics and Regional Development. He has been a visiting researcher at several European Universities: University of the Balearic Islands, University of Bath, University of Helsinki, University of Southern Denmark, and University of Stirling. He has published in influential journals in the fields of Environmental Economics and Tourism. One of his core research interests is the interactions between tourism and the environment.

Patrícia Pinto

Patrícia Pinto holds a PhD in Quantitative Methods Applied to Economics and Management (Statistics) from the University of Algarve. She is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve, Portugal. She is also Member of the board of the PhD programme in Tourism and of the Master programmes in Management and in Marketing Management. She has published in influential journals in the field of Tourism and is the coordinator of the Research Centre for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics (CIEO). Her main research interests are sustainable tourism and tourism management.

Andreia Costa

Andreia Costa holds a Master in Tourism Economics and Regional Development, undertaken at the Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve. Before taking the masters, she took a degree in Ecotourism and a post-graduation in Hospitality Management. She currently works at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre of Ria Formosa and her main research interest is ecotourism.

António Matias

Antonio Matias holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Algarve, Portugal. He is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve, where he is also Director of the Bachelor’s Degree in Economics. His core research interest is the interactions between tourism and the environment.

M. Helena Guimarães

Maria Helena Guimarães holds a PhD in Environmental Science from the Azores University. She is a junior researcher at MED – Mediterranean Institute for Agriculture, Environment and Development, Évora University. Her publication record comprises studies in management of natural resources including birdwatching, environmental economics and nature based tourism. Her main research topics are transdisciplinarity, natural resource management, social-ecological systems and sustainability.