The Study of Eco-Friendly Purchase Behavior from Triple Perspectives: A Mediation Effect of Environmentally Responsible Behavior

• Main Authors: Chang, Wei-Yen, 張崴彥
• Other Authors: Hsu, Li-Chun
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/335jf6

碩士 === 國立臺東大學 === 進修部休閒事業管理組碩(夜間） === 106 === With the growing tourism industry brings more economic benefits for local area. The economic benefits brought by the tourism industry are gradually valued in the world. Countries constantly invest resources to strengthen the construction of software and hardware; however, it is easy to neglect the environmental impacts of tourism. In order to balance the sustainability of the tourism environment, we began to think about how to develop sustainable tourism through eco-tourism. Therefore, this study attempts to adopt environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) and to develop a research model of its antecedents and consequences. The potential predictors of ERB are used to find out the influence on environmentally responsible behavior (general ERB and site-specific ERB) through attitude characteristics (environmental belief and environmental attitude), social & emotional characteristics (place identity and place attachment) and personal characteristics (local environmental awareness and local environmental sensitivity), and that ERB as a mediator to confirm the influence effect on eco-friendly purchase behavior. By eco-tourism sites being used as a sample sites for this study, and how to combine the more natural protected sites with environmental education guide to lead visitors further exploring the attractions. Participants of this study comprised members who had attended the eco-tour of visiting Xiaoyeliu at night in East Coast National Scenic Area in 2017. Data was collected via paper questionnaires in two stages after tourists finished their touring at Xioyeliu. For the pretest, 250 responses were completed and 207 were valid, the effective recovery ratio is 77.7%; and as to the formal questionnaire, 522 responses were completed with excluding 126 invalid questionnaires and 396 were valid, the effective recovery ratio is 75.86%. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the proposed model and the structural model has shown a good fit. (1) From the results within the hypothesis model, environmental belief, place identity, place attachment and local environmental awareness does not have significant effect on site-specific environmentally responsible behavior, the remaining 10 hypothesis are supported. (2) It is found that general environmentally responsible behavior has significant and positive influence of site-specific environmentally responsible behavior as an additional hypothesis path in the rival model. However, the rival model does not significantly improve the model fit. (3) In the multi-group analysis, “monthly income” and “travelling in holidays or not” as a variable is used to divide the tourists into different group. The results show that different group has different paths in the structural model. The general environmentally responsible behavior has significant and positive influence of eco-friendly purchase behavior in “lower monthly income” group and “travelling in holidays” group, but site-specific environmentally responsible behavior has significant and positive influence of eco-friendly purchase behavior in “higher monthly income” group and “without travelling in holidays” group. For different groups of tourists, the basic attributes are different. The potential predictors of ERB which include: attitude characteristics (environmental belief and environmental attitude), social & emotional characteristics (place identity and place attachment), personal characteristics (local environmental sensitivity and local environmental awareness) have different level on significant and positive influence effect. General ERB partially mediates the relationship between the attitude perspectives (environmental belief and environmental attitude), social & emotional perspectives (place identity and place attachment) and the eco-friendly purchase behavior of tourists. Site-specific ERB not only partially mediates the relationship between environmental attitude and eco-friendly purchase behavior, but also partially mediates the relationship between local environmental sensitivity and eco-friendly purchase behavior. Therefore, environmentally responsible behavior can as an important mediator between different perspectives and eco-friendly purchase behavior. In conclusion, practical implications and suggestions were provided after discussing the finding of this study and predominating tourist’s environmentally responsible behaviors in travel. This study provides the best perspectives and important suggestion of developing responsible tourism according to local culture and environmental feature for travel related management unit.