Influence of tourists’ environmental tropisms on their attitudes to tourism and nature conservation in natural tourist destinations: A case study of Jiuzhaigou National Park in China

People’s environmental tropism has an effect on their understanding of tourism-nature relationship, and also influences their attitudes to natural resources utilization and environmental protection. Taking Jiuzhaigou National Park of China as a study case, the authors conducted some quantitative analyses with the tools of SPSS 16.0 and LISREL 8.7, to explore the influence of tourists’ environmental tropism on their attitudes to tourism and nature conservation in the natural tourist destination. Three hypotheses and the theoretic model of influences of tourists’ environmental tropism on their attitudes to tourism and nature conservation have been tested and accepted based on the Structural Equation Model analysis on survey data collected in Jiuzhaigou National Park of China. Some conclusions were drawn as follows: 1) tourists’ human-prioritized concept influences their cognition to tourism-nature relationship. This concept has a positive influence on their supportive attitudes to tourism, but a negative influence on their attitudes to nature conservation; 2) tourists’ human-nature coordination concept has a positive influence on their supportive attitudes to both tourism and nature conservation, especially to the latter. This paper generally proves that human’s environmental tropism does have an influence on their attitudes to tourism and nature conservation in natural tourist destinations.