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

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. Contemporar...

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Autor principal: Gültekin, Yaşar Selman
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9117084/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35585457
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20882-y
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author Gültekin, Yaşar Selman
author_facet Gültekin, Yaşar Selman
author_sort Gültekin, Yaşar Selman
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-91170842022-05-19 Ecotourism through the perception of forest villagers: understanding via mediator effects using structural equation modeling Gültekin, Yaşar Selman Environ Sci Pollut Res Int Research Article 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. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2022-05-19 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9117084/ /pubmed/35585457 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20882-y Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Research Article
Gültekin, Yaşar Selman
Ecotourism through the perception of forest villagers: understanding via mediator effects using structural equation modeling
title Ecotourism through the perception of forest villagers: understanding via mediator effects using structural equation modeling
title_full Ecotourism through the perception of forest villagers: understanding via mediator effects using structural equation modeling
title_fullStr Ecotourism through the perception of forest villagers: understanding via mediator effects using structural equation modeling
title_full_unstemmed Ecotourism through the perception of forest villagers: understanding via mediator effects using structural equation modeling
title_short Ecotourism through the perception of forest villagers: understanding via mediator effects using structural equation modeling
title_sort ecotourism through the perception of forest villagers: understanding via mediator effects using structural equation modeling
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9117084/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35585457
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20882-y
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