Social involvement and park citizenship as moderators for quality-of-life in a national park

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to the advancement of quality-of-life research in tourism by examining complex relationships involving direct, mediated, moderated and moderated mediation relationships among the antecedents to quality-of-life. Using a sample of 222 repeat visitors in an Australian national park, the findings indicate positive significant effects of (1) place satisfaction on quality-of-life; (2) place satisfaction on place attachment; (3) place attachment on quality-of-life; (4) park citizenship on place attachment. The findings further support that (5) place attachment mediates the relationship between place satisfaction and quality-of-life; (6) social involvement moderates the relationship between place satisfaction and place attachment; (7) park citizenship moderates the relationship between place satisfaction and place attachment; (8) social involvement moderates the relationship between place attachment and quality-of-life; (9) social involvement moderates the indirect effect of place satisfaction on quality-of-life. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Park managers, for example, need to promote on-site marketing and post-visit communication/interpretation, encouraging repeat visits and behavioural change. Message delivery needs to promote a sense of belonging to the park with personal meaning, creating place distinctiveness. Personal actions to promote include signing petitions supporting the park's biodiversity, and other resources, and volunteering to participate in meetings and other direct actions.

KEYWORDS:

• Quality-of-life
• place satisfaction
• place attachment
• park citizenship
• social involvement
• moderated mediation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Pro-environmental behaviours can be of different types (e.g. low-effort and high-effort), depending on the settings, resources, physical actions, amount of effort required and specific outcomes. In a national park's context, a person with low-effort pro-environmental behaviour requires minimum efforts to actively undertake activities, such as telling one's friends not to feed birds in the park to safeguard the park's resources. Higher-effort pro-environmental behaviour requires more efforts such as advocating to other stakeholders on behalf of the national park policies to protect the park's biodiversity and improve its resources.

2. A salutogenic approach to health focuses on factors that support human health and well-being, rather than on factors that cause disease (a pathogenic approach).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Haywantee Ramkissoon

Haywantee Rumi Ramkissoon is an associate professor and director of the Tourism Research Cluster at Curtin Business School, and Senior Research Fellow at Monash University, both in Australia. Rumi received the 2017 Emerging Scholar of Distinction award from the International Academy for the study of Tourism for her contribution to innovative and ground breaking tourism research. She holds two doctoral degrees in Tourism and Applied Environmental Psychology; her postdoctoral experience focuses on behaviour change. She is book review editor for Current Issues in Tourism and research note editor for Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management.

Felix Mavondo

Professor Felix Mavondo is at the Monash University Business School Department of Marketing. He has published extensively and is on the editorial board of several Marketing, Management and Tourism journals. Current interests include sustainable tourism, dynamic capabilities and supply chain management and strategic marketing.

Muzaffer Uysal

Muzaffer Uysal is Department Chair of Hospitality and Tourism at Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts. He is a member of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, the Academy of Leisure Sciences, and serves as co-editor of Tourism Analysis. His research interests centre on tourism demand/supply interaction, tourism marketing and quality-of-life research in tourism.