Place attachment as a mediator of the relationship between nature-based recreation benefits and future visit intentions

Abstract

This study examined the theoretical relationships between consumers' perceived benefits, place attachment and future visit intentions (FVI) at nature-based recreation and tourism areas, utilizing importance and performance concepts. The desired benefits and perceived attained benefits of consumers were treated as an antecedent to place attachment and FVI in structural models. Results of two separate structural models tests using responses from 934 visitors at the Ocala National Forest in Florida, USA, confirmed that place attachment fully mediates the relationship between benefits desired and FVI, while place attachment partially mediates the relationship between benefits attained and FVI. The former verifies the significant role of place attachment, and the latter validates the importance of place attachment as well as recreation benefit attainment in predicting visitors' FVI. These findings suggest that both benefits desired and benefits attained are important predictors of place attachment and behavioral intentions. Accordingly, tourism and recreation planners and managers need to provide visitors with recreation opportunities, which maximize visitors' ability to attain recreation benefits, such as nature exploration, physical fitness and escape. These managerial initiatives would result in increasing visitors' emotional attachments and intentions to revisit.

Research in Sustainable Tourism: A Longitudinal Study of Articles between 2008 and 2017

“…The development of sustainable tourism is bound to gain support from all stakeholders and influence the supportive behavior of residents [44], the policy-making behavior of government officials [45], as well as the industry and academia's behavioral change from solely marketing to marketing sustainably [46]. Moreover, place attachment is affirmed to be crucial in cultivating the eco-friendly behavior of tourists [47,48].…”

Rural Destination Development Based on Olive Oil Tourism: The Impact of Residents’ Community Attachment and Quality of Life on Their Support for Tourism Development

“…Attachment includes relationships between people and their surroundings, which can be reflected in positive, negative or mixed feelings. In this way, it can play a key role in influencing residents' perceptions of and attitudes towards tourism development in their community [25,31].…”

Recreationist-environment fit and place attachment

“…In the tourism and recreation fields, some constructs including destination attractiveness (Hou et al, 2005;Lee, 2001), activity involvement (Bricker & Kerstetter, 2000;Kyle, Bricker, et al, 2004;Kyle, Graefe, Manning, & Bacon, 2003), and recreation benefits (Kila, Hollandb, Steina, & Kob, 2012;Kyle, Mowen, & Tarrant, 2004) have been identified as critical antecedents of place attachment. Destination attractiveness was defined by Hu and Ritchie (1993) as a combination of "the relative importance of individual benefits and the perceived ability of the destination to deliver individual benefits" (p. 25).…”