Influential Factors for Sustainable Intention to Visit a National Park during COVID-19: The Extended Theory of Planned Behavior with Perception of Risk and Coping Behavior

Abstract

Despite the danger of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, visits to natural tourism destinations such as national parks are continuing, though people are using less congested trails or minimizing personal contact. Given the danger from COVID-19, the purpose of our study was to use an expanded theory of planned behavior to analyze whether tourists intend to continue to visit national parks. Another purpose for our study was to compare an extant research model based on the theory of planned behavior with the extended model we developed. Frequency analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and other statistical techniques, such as correlation analysis, parsimonious fit index, and squared multiple correlations were employed according to the appropriate objectives. Additionally, the number of 351 participants joined the survey. Our study found that perception of risk of COVID-19 negatively affected attitude and perceived behavioral control in both models. Moreover, the perceived behavioral control had a positive effect on coping behavior. Given the analytical results, our study presents not only theoretical implications for understanding the behavior of those who visit national parks, but also practical implications for operation and management of national parks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Urban tourists' intention towards visiting national parks: an exertion of theory of planned behaviour and expectancy theory

“…Thus, H3 was accepted. This finding confirms prior studies (Fenitra et al , 2022; Huang et al , 2014; Jia et al , 2022; Seong et al , 2021). The basis for this finding could be that innovative knowledge, information and favourable behaviour would influence urban tourists' visiting behaviour towards national parks.…”

Post-pandemic intention to participate in the tourism and hospitality (T&H) events: an integrated investigation through the lens of the theory of planned behavior and perception of Covid-19

“…Therefore, H3 was accepted. This is similar to the past studies (Pahrudin et al , 2021; Abbasi et al , 2021; Seong et al , 2021). PBC has been evolved as the second strongest significant determinant of intention to participate in T&H events.…”

Sociocultural factors and social entrepreneurial intention during the COVID-19 pandemic: Preliminary evidence from developing countries

“…These theoretical backgrounds received prominence and credibility to explain the formation of intention throughout many research areas, such as technology acceptance (e.g., Fink et al, 2022;Marangunić & Granić, 2015), consumer services (e.g., Paul et al, 2016;Timpanaro & Cascone, 2022), supply chain management (e.g., Kamble et al, 2019;Shou et al, 2022), family business (e.g., Graves et al, 2022;Singh et al, 2021), product innovation (e.g., Kim et al, 2019;Tóth et al, 2020), small business (e.g., Harrison et al, 1997;Sandhu & El-Gohary, 2022), and absorptive capacity (e.g., Chao & Yu, 2022;Mo et al, 2022). More interestingly, these foundations have recently emerged as a cornerstone in investigating the COVID-19 influence on intention research across several fields, including psychology (e.g., Islam et al, 2020;Shanka & Gebremariam Kotecho, 2021);tourism (e.g., Jeon et al, 2022;Xu et al, 2022); sustainability (e.g., Cahigas et al, 2022;Seong et al, 2021); and, more importantly, entrepreneurship (e.g., Lang et al, 2022;Li et al, 2022;Seah, 2021).…”