Effect of Environmental Values on Ecotourism Visit Intention: Evidence from a Sub-Saharan African Context

Human activities are causing great damage to the climate and the consequences are projected to be dire in the future. Tourism alone contributes about 8% to greenhouse emissions necessitating the call for sustainable tourism as a way to promote environmental conservation. This study examines the effect of environmental values on ecotourism visit intentions. The specific objectives were to ascertain the effects of biospheric, altruistic and egoistic values on ecotourism visit intention. Three hypotheses were stated and data was collected from 196 intending tourists out of which 163 were returned valid and used for the analysis. The data were collected through social media and the hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis via SPSS version 22 and descriptive statistics used to describe respondents’ demographics. The result showed that biospheric and altruistic values both have a positive and significant effect on ecotourism visit intention. While egoistic values negatively predict ecotourism visit intentions. Based on the findings, this study recommends that tourist destination marketers should strongly communicate the environmental benefits of travel and tourism on ecotourism destinations.