Evaluating Forest Visitors' Place Attachment, Recreational Activities
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Article Evaluating Forest Visitors’ Place Attachment, Recreational Activities, and Travel Intentions under Different Climate Scenarios Wan-Yu Liu 1 , Hung-Wen Yu 1 and Chi-Ming Hsieh 2,* 1 Innovation and Development Center of Sustainable Agriculture, Department of Forestry, National Chung Hsing University, 145 Xingda Rd., South Dist., Taichung City 40227, Taiwan; [email protected] (W.-Y.L.); [email protected] (H.-W.Y.) 2 International Bachelor Program of Agribusiness, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung City 40227, Taiwan * Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: Climate change leads to a variety of extreme weather conditions such as heat waves, unusual cold weather, and heavy rain, which always ends up with serious disasters. It could have a tremendous impact on a lot of industries in the world. The tourist industry, that plays a vital role in the global economy, has faced serious impacts from climate change in many tourist attractions, e.g., national parks, mountain areas, and beaches. The travel behavior of visitors has been changed under various climate change conditions. To understand the influence degrees of tourists on climate change factors, this study aimed to analyze whether there is difference in the influence of climate change on socio-demographic background, travel activities, travel intention, and the revisit intention attitude of tourists with different degrees of place attachment to Wuling National Forest Recreation Area. This study further investigated whether the climate change adaptation strategies offered by the park manager would have a positive influence on travel intention of tourists. The results of this study Citation: Liu, W.-Y.; Yu, H.-W.; showed that except for heat waves, events related to climate change such as stronger typhoon, heavy Hsieh, C.-M. Evaluating Forest rain, unusual cold weather condition, mud sliding, forest fire, and the appearance of mosquitos Visitors’ Place Attachment, would have a negative influence on travel intention, especially for the tourists with a low degree Recreational Activities, and Travel of place attachment. In addition, if the park manager offers strategies to adapt to climate change Intentions under Different Climate conditions, these strategies would have a positive influence on travel intention. Scenarios. Forests 2021, 12, 171. https://doi.org/10.3390/f12020171 Keywords: climate change; recreational activities; place attachment; travel intentions Academic Editor: Philippe Delacote Received: 6 December 2020 Accepted: 29 January 2021 1. Introduction Published: 2 February 2021 Global climate change is a problem of grave concern. The General Assembly of Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral the United Nations (UN) identified it as the most pressing issue that the world must with regard to jurisdictional claims in address this century. The frequency of extreme weather conditions such as heatwaves, published maps and institutional affil- droughts, rainstorms, and hurricanes has increased [1]. These factors affect the time and iations. location of outdoor tourism and nature sightseeing activities [2,3]. As global climate conditions continue to be worsened in the foreseeable future, tourism resources will inevitably become subject to the effects of climate conditions, altering tourists’ frequency and travel intention [4–6]. Climate change has different consequences across different parts of the world, which results in the variation of tourism destination attractiveness and tourist Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. activities [5]. Earlier research studied how tourism demand in different locations would be This article is an open access article affected by climate change conditions, such as in national parks [7,8], mountain trails and distributed under the terms and ski resorts [9–11], and beaches and shorelines [12,13]. Any change in the flows of tourists conditions of the Creative Commons and their expenditure would create effects economically and socially for different locations. Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// For instance, on a global scale, a warmer climate would attract people to destinations creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ situated in higher-latitude locations, bringing benefits to the tourism industries there. 4.0/). Conversely, the same climate change effect would have negative consequences on the Forests 2021, 12, 171. https://doi.org/10.3390/f12020171 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests Forests 2021, 12, 171 2 of 20 tourism industry near the equator [14]. The frequency of tourism travel would potentially affect business strategies and operations in different regions. Therefore, it is essential to take the tourism behavior of future tourists into account to address the consequences of global climate change [6]. Tourists can adapt to climate change and local weather conditions in tourism areas by substituting their desired activities [15]. Iso-Ahola’s theory of substitutability states that when people recognize the necessity of potential alternatives, they would be willing to change their original plans. Therefore, weather prediction and preplanning of recre- ational activities would affect the intention of many tourists because they may adapt to circumstances and change their plans [6]. Climate change also affects various aspects of society, including people’s perception of tourist locations. According to research by Amundsen [16], tourists with different degrees of place attachment will respond in various ways when faced with similar environmental problems. Park managers must likewise take appropriate measures in response to the effects of climate change. Rising sea levels and more hurricane strikes are leading to an increased probability of coastal flooding. Local communities have resorted to improving the rain- and waste-water drainage system, alongside other measures, and must bear the enormous costs spent on these measures, which may only be of benefit in a few critical situations unless the effects of climate change worsen [17]. Because it is tourists who express their travel intention as part of their ul- timate decision, communities ought to gauge how tourists react to relevant measures before executing projects and study how these measures correlate with tourists’ place attachment to that specific locale [18]. This research explored the relationship between place attachment and recreational activities, as well as the effects of global climate change on tourists’ travel intention. In addition, this research studied whether the implementation of climate-change adaptational policies would influence tourists’ willingness to engage in recreational activities. The three focus questions for this research were as follows: (1) Do different degrees of place attachment affect the types of recreational activities in which tourists partake in a recreational forest area? (2) Would tourists with different degrees of place attachment differ in their sociodemographic background, intention to revisit, and tourist intention? (3) Will tourists’ travel intention rise significantly because of park managers’ adaptational policies to global climate change and related issues? This study’s findings will help business owners in the tourist industry, tour planners, and tour service providers to better grasp the nuances that could generate tourists’ revisit intention when considering the effects of climate change. This study hopes to serve as a reference for administrators formulating managing strategies in recreational forest areas in response to climate change. This research also hopes to assist the management of recreational forest areas and national parks, enabling administrators to identify different groups according to differing degrees of place attachment and increase tourists’ travel demand. When people identify with a particular area, or when they develop a sense of at- tachment to the area’s culture [19,20], a space-specific significance will form [21]. Place attachment describes why people have a particular attachment to a specific area [22]. It reflects the intrinsic value that people assign to each place [23], as well as a range of place- specific emotional attachments that are engendered [24,25]. Although place attachment tends to increase proportionally with the number of tourist visits [26,27], people may still develop place attachment if they recognize a location’s overall importance and symbol- ism without having ever visited [20]. Place attachment is a multi-faceted concept with two relatively more conventional indicators: place identity and place dependence [26]. Place identity describes the emotional attachment of a person to a specific place, and place dependency is a person’s reliance on bonding with a specific location [24]. Place identity forms when someone develops an emotional bond or perception toward a specific place [28,29]. If we consider the fact that some places have specialized attractions (e.g., scenery, habitat, culture, and spots) that shape visitors’ expectations of specific activities and target goals [24], place dependency refers to the functional aspect of attachment. Place Forests 2021, 12, 171 3 of 20 attachment is assessed by focusing on specific activities and goals to assess the degree of dependency compared with other substitutable places [26,30]. To establish acceptable reliability for the two indicators, researchers have used four- to six-question formats to conduct interviews (e.g., Reference [24]). Recently, many scholars have introduced other indicators to measure place attach- ment such