Wildlife Conservation through Economically Responsible Ecotourist: The Mediator Roles of Attitude between Anticipated Emotion and Intention to Stay in Local Homestays

Abstract

If responsible ecotourists stay in a local homestay, this will benefit local people economically and lead to improved wildlife conservation. This study aims to examine the mediator roles of attitudes between anticipated emotion and intention. It was conducted in Penang National Park, Malaysia, and a stratified sampling method was used for collecting the data. In all, 320 sets of questionnaires were analysed using the SPSS Amos 24.0 Statistical Software Package to test the Structural Equation Modelling. The findings show that economically responsible ecotourist attitudes to staying in local homestays for wildlife conservation partially mediate the relationship between anticipated emotion and intention to stay in a local homestay for wildlife conservation. This study suggests that players in the ecotourism industry should incorporate emotional elements in their marketing strategies to promote local homestays to responsible ecotourists, which would benefit local economies.

Theory of Planned Behaviour to Predict Responsible Ecotourism: Structural Equation Modelling

“…The obtained results demonstrated a mediating role of attitude toward purchasing local products and services for wildlife conservation between the relationship of anticipated emotion and intention of ecotourist RB in Penang National Park. This result is in line with previous studies that mentioned attitude is a mediator in the relationship between emotion and intention (Gilchrist et al, 2019;Ibrahim et al, 2021b;Taylor et al, 2016). In other words, attitude is a mediator between the relationship of anticipated emotion and intention.…”

“…According to MacKenzie, et al (1986), attitude is a mediator in the interaction between two other variables. Previous studies indicated that attitude mediates the relationship between emotion and intention (Gilchrist et al, 2019;Ibrahim et al, 2021b;Taylor et al, 2016). According to Bamberg (2003), environmental concern indirectly affects intention through attitude as a mediator and is also supported by several studies (Chen, & Tung, 2014;De Groot & Steg, 2007;Ibrahim et al, 2021a;Kumar et al, 2022;Onurlubaş, 2018;Zhu et al, 2020).…”

“…I believe if things continue their present course, we will soon experience a major ecological catastrophe. Ibrahim et al (2021b) Items of Intentions 1. I intend to buy local food vendor that contributes to the conservation of wildlife when vising Penang National Park next year.…”

“…Items of Attitude Ibrahim et al (2021b) 3. I intend to stay in local homestay that contributes to the conservation of wildlife when visiting Penang National Park next year.…”

Assessing immediate emotions in the theory of planned behavior can substantially contribute to increases in pro-environmental behavior

“…First, existing pro-environmental TPB studies underexplore immediate emotions. Advanced Google Scholar searches up to November 2022 using "TPB" and "immediate emotion*" yielded one pro-environmental TPB study that briefly mentioned immediate emotions (Ibrahim et al, 2021), two pro-environmental TPB studies suggesting immediate emotions as a possible avenue of research (Kim et al, 2013;Brosch et al, 2014), and two pro-environmental papers examining the utility of immediate emotions for enhancing decentralized water system acceptance (Mankad, 2012) and public service announcement effectiveness (Poškus et al, 2019). Another search using "TPB" and "anticipatory" or "incidental" yielded one pro-environmental study that evaluated anticipatory worry's influence on cyclists' risk-taking behavior (Kummeneje and Rundmo, 2020).…”