Ecotourism through the perception of forest villagers: understanding via mediator effects using structural equation modeling

Abstract

Ecotourism activities play an important role in providing economic gain to villagers living in forest ecosystems. Successful sustainable forest management is made possible through the environmental responsibility of the stakeholders and the support of the local inhabitants of the region. Contemporary studies conducted in ecotourism have focused on meeting regional expectations by assessing the satisfaction levels and attitudes of tourists and evaluating hotel management services, but have excluded the perspective of the rural people in the region. Using causal models and mediation effects, this study attempted to explore the attitudes of forest villagers, as the most important interest group, toward ecotourism activities in Turkey. Structural equation modeling and bootstrap methods were applied to identify key concepts related to ecotourism including the mediation effects between income opportunities and ecotourism satisfaction as perceived by the forest villagers regarding perceived negative effects and insufficient services. According to the results of the research, it was determined that, despite the perceived negative effects of ecotourism activities by the forest villagers, income opportunities made a strong positive contribution to their perceived ecotourism satisfaction. Study results offer significant implications for policymakers and ecotourism planners for decreasing pressure on forest ecosystems through participatory forest management approaches to sustainable development in rural areas associated with forest ecosystems.

Ecological city concept: Challenge and future research agenda in urban ecology perspective

“…There are 24 themes of ecosystem services (Zhou et al, 2018;Aguilera et al, 2020;Aryal et al, 2023;Gültekin, 2022;Ren and Li, 2022;Viezzer and Biondi, 2021;Xie et al, 2023;W. Wang et al, 2021;Gao et al, 2020;Calheiros and Stefanakis, 2021;R.…”

“…The ecology of cities as a whole, including examining the dynamics of energy, water, materials, and information entering and exiting urban areas and their corresponding impacts on internal and external environments (Aryal et al, 2023;Gültekin, 2022;Zarea et al, 2019;Ng et al, 2014;Jirapornvaree et al, 2021). All life cycle assessment keywords are dominated by discussions regarding the optimization of ecosystem services in ecology for cities, municipal solid waste management (Zarea et al, 2019;Adeleke et al, 2021;Avarand et al, 2023;Yadav and Samadder, 2017;Liu et al, 2021;Pokhrel et al, 2020), wastewater and storm water (Ng et al, 2014;Tang et al, 2023;Rostami et al, 2019;Avarand et al, 2023;de Sampaio Lopes et al, 2020).…”

Ecotourism Development Policy, Supporting Capacity and Development of Sustainable Tourism Facilities and Infrastructure in Raja Ampat Regency, West Papua Province

“…Ecotourism includes a considerable financial impact in today's advanced period (Salman et al, 2022;Gültekin, 2022). It produces business for the goal and gives the community an elective source of salary (Nguyen & Tong, 2022).…”

“…In settings with multiple populations, such as Raja Ampat, ecotourism is unquestionably secondary to the community's active participation in ecotourism activities. Current research proposes that key stakeholders' association and collaboration with the management specialist can advance partnerships among partners, improve the destination's fiscal conditions, expand market opportunity, and increase destination competitiveness, thereby increasing the destination's benefits (Gültekin, 2022;Salman et al, 2021).…”

Farmers’ Perception of Tourism in Sustainable Development of Forests and Their Decisions in China: The Sustainability of the Prism Model and SEM Model

“…Our common future should be committed to a mode that combines environmental protection with economic development. In order to better protect the earth, many national forest ecological protection policies have been tightened in recent years; within which the use of forest resources has been so restricted that farmers depending on them have been affected to a certain extent, resulting in a "short board" of regional poverty alleviation [1]. In the process of forest tourism development, if the relationship between humans and the forest is not properly handled, the natural ecosystem may be affected, thus affecting the sustainable development of the forest, which reflects the important role of humans in forests.…”