A Study On Tourists' Behavior And Management Based On Environmental Impact

With the development of tourism, environmental impacts have become key issue of concern, esp. in nature-based tourist attractions. Tourist behavior is a major cause of environmental impact. Every tourist is a potential pollution source in each tourist attraction and some tourists' improper behavior will cause serious pollution and damage to its ecological environment. Research on tourist behavior is far from enough, therefore it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study the tourist behavior and management.Based on the foundation of former theoretical research achievements, this paper is a case study of the first national wetland park in China on its tourist characteristics, environmental impact behavior and its consequence. Proper management measures are also provided. The data used for this research come from questionnaire survey, site investigation and second-hand data collection. SPSS is used for statistical analysis of the survey to explore the relationship between the tourist characteristics and his/her environmental protection awareness as well as his/her environmental impact behaviors. Records observed on site are used to study the relationship between tourist individual characteristics and his/her environmental impact behaviors. Second-hand data of tourist flow is offered by Xixi Wetland Administration, on which time-series study is conducted to find out its seasonal features and time allocation.Achievements of this study include:Tourist overall characteristics of Xixi Wetland are described in detail, and the relationship of tourist characteristics with his/her environmental protection awareness and impact behavior is analyzed. A comparative study is given about the differences between local visitors and tourists. Tourist behavior is classified into unavoidable and improper, and targets and impacts of different behaviors are illustrated. Proper management measures are suggested regarding to tourists of different characteristics and behaviors.Conclusions of this paper:1. Most tourists in Xixi Wetland Park are of essential sense of environmental protection awareness and self-controlled in behavior, but short of strong sense of responsibility.2. No obvious difference is found between local visitors and tourists in their environmental protection awareness. Serious environmental impact on Monday can be explained as the result of huge tourist flow due to free admission on that day. 3. Relationship is found between tourist individual characteristics and their behaviors, strongly related with their age and education.4. Environmental impacts of unavoidable behavior are closely related to the number of tourists, and therefore attention should be paid to the control of tourist flow. More serious impacts are caused by improper behaviors and corresponding management measures should taken considering the variety of such kind of behaviors.