Tour guides and the protection of archaeological sites: a case from Jordan

ABSTRACT

This paper aims at examining the commitment of tour guides to take the role of instructing tourists to avoid destructive behaviours during their visitation, a theoretical model was developed to include the concepts of value orientations, social norms and personal norms/commitment. A model where social norms fully mediated the relationship between value orientations and personal norms/commitment proved to be statistically most fitting; social norms had a significant relation of a moderate strength with personal norms/commitment. Such findings confirm the need to encourage and qualify tour guides to take a better role in influencing the behaviour of tourist groups to become more responsible.

KEYWORDS:

• Tour guides
• value orientations
• social norms
• personal norms
• visitor management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mairna Hussein Mustafa

Mairna Hussein Mustafa, Associate professor in Queen Rania Faculty of Tourism & Heritage/ Hashemite University-Zarqa/Jordan. Research interests and published work are mostly in: behaviour of tourists in archaeological sites, tourism education, sociocultural impacts of tourism, and cultural heritage, also ancient symbolism.