Place attachment as a mediator of the relationship between nature-based recreation benefits and future visit intentions

Abstract

This study examined the theoretical relationships between consumers’ perceived benefits, place attachment and future visit intentions (FVI) at nature-based recreation and tourism areas, utilizing importance and performance concepts. The desired benefits and perceived attained benefits of consumers were treated as an antecedent to place attachment and FVI in structural models. Results of two separate structural models tests using responses from 934 visitors at the Ocala National Forest in Florida, USA, confirmed that place attachment fully mediates the relationship between benefits desired and FVI, while place attachment partially mediates the relationship between benefits attained and FVI. The former verifies the significant role of place attachment, and the latter validates the importance of place attachment as well as recreation benefit attainment in predicting visitors’ FVI. These findings suggest that both benefits desired and benefits attained are important predictors of place attachment and behavioral intentions. Accordingly, tourism and recreation planners and managers need to provide visitors with recreation opportunities, which maximize visitors’ ability to attain recreation benefits, such as nature exploration, physical fitness and escape. These managerial initiatives would result in increasing visitors’ emotional attachments and intentions to revisit.

将地域附属性作为以自然为基准的娱乐优势和将来的参观意图之间的媒介

该文章使用重要性和表现性等概念, 检阅了在以自然为基准的娱乐和旅游地区, 存在于消费者得到的收益, 地域附属性和将来参观意图（FVI）之间的理论联系。消费者所需的收益和已经获得的收益被作为在结构化模式中的地域附属性和FVI的诱因。文章用了从美国佛罗里达州的Ocala国家森林公园的934位参观者的答复做了两个单独的结构化模式测试。结论证明地域附属性在消费者所需的收益和FVI的关系当中起了绝对的媒介调解作用, 而在已经获得的收益和FVI当中却只有相对的调解作用。前者证明了地域附属性的重要性, 而后者解释了地域附属性和娱乐收益在预测参观者的FVI中都很重要。这些结论建议所需的收益和得到的收益是地域附属性和行为意图的重要预测因子。另外, 旅游和娱乐的规划者和管理者需要提供给参观者娱乐的机会, 这些机会将参观者得到的娱乐收益的能力最大化, 例如自然探索, 体能锻炼, 和寻找休闲安逸的机会。这些管理上的方法能导致提高参观者的情绪化和再次参观的意图。

Keywords:

• destination planning
• nature-based tourism
• tourist behavior
• visitor attitudes

关键词:

• 目的地规划
• 以自然为基准的旅游
• 旅游者行为
• 参观者态度

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Florida Division of Forestry and the Ocala National Forest for their financial support of this project, thank research assistants for their data collection efforts, and thank visitors for their survey responses and contributed time. Also, the authors thank Bill Bramwell and Bernard Lane, coeditors of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, for their careful and constructive editing of this paper and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the paper.