The Health Benefit of Forest Ecotourism

• Main Authors: Ling-Hsiu Chang, 張淩綉
• Other Authors: Hsiao-Lin Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/31634729207517946381

碩士 === 朝陽科技大學 === 建築及都市設計研究所 === 95 === The concept of ecotourism is at moderating the conflict between tourism development and environmental protection, and attempting to bring together local community participation and promoting sustainable development of local economy. The establishment of year 2002 as The International Year of Ecotourism by the U.N. showed worldwide concern on ecotourism. Benefited by the booming economic, raising GDP and the implement of two-day weekend from 2001, the leisure time of Taiwanese nationals has been increased. In the meanwhile, people’s willingness to participate in forest tourism has also been stimulated. In the field of environmental psychology, more and more researches pointed out that some environments could affect people’s health at a certain level. Health promotion is the current medical trend while disease prevention is the primary goal in health promotion. Ecotourism may be a shortcut to meet the health demand, and of which, forest ecotourism has more significant effect on health benefits. Presently, there is a wide range of research topics on ecotourism, yet discussions on health are limited. This study generalized the effects and meanings of ecotourism based on literature review, and further incorporated health benefits into the perspective of ecotourism, discussed environmental factors that affect health benefits, in order to verify the health benefits obtained from forest ecotourism. This study surveyed tourists by means of purposive sampling, and obtained 214 valid samples. Pre-test and post-test were adopted to compare the health effect indices before and after the ecotourism. The data were analyzed with SPSS 10.0.7C for Windows. The results showed that after the ecotourism, the psychological health index, including positive emotion, pressure, and mental fatigue, was higher than the indices before the tour. Therefore we concluded that forest ecotourism has significant improvement effect on health and the tourism environment has a positive correlation with the recovery index and health benefits. It is hoped that the results are helpful to health-oriented travel market, and served as a reference to travel plans.