The Environmental Values of Potential Ectourist Segmentation Process

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The Environmental Values of PotentialEcotourists: A Segmentation StudyChristos Zografos a & David Allcroft ba Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona , Spainb Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS) , Edinburgh, UKPublished online: 05 Jan 2009.

To cite this article: Christos Zografos & David Allcroft (2007) The Environmental Values of PotentialEcotourists: A Segmentation Study, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 15:1, 44-66, DOI: 10.2167/jost572.0

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The Environmental Values of Potential Ecotourists: A Segmentation Study

Christos ZografosUniversitat Autnoma de Barcelona, Spain

David AllcroftBiomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS), Edinburgh, UK

Although sustainable tourism that contributes to biodiversity protection seems to be important anywhere in the planet, ecotourism is rarely examined as a rural devel-opment opportunity outside the context of mega-diverse countries, i.e. those 12 countries1 that between them harbour 6070% of the total biodiversity of the planet. Collecting data from 20 sites around Scotland, this study considered the potential of ecotourism development in this country through a market segmentation study based on the environmental values of potential ecotourists. With the assistance of the New Ecological Paradigm (Dunlap et al., 2000) four segments with a range of anthropocen-tric and ecocentric values were identified. Results indicate that demand for ecotourism is not confined to ecocentric segments and that biodiversity protection is prioritised by all segments as the most salient ecotourism attribute, although each segment attaches a different intensity to its importance. The study identifies visitor interest for a Scottish ecotourism experience that emphasises biodiversity conservation and low use of exhaustible resources, while providing facilities for wildlife watching, hill walking and relaxing. Although segment attitudes towards ecotourism do not differ significantly, environmental values can be used to segment potential ecotourists as they allow the formation of visitor groups with different trip characteristics.

doi: 10.2167/jost572.0

Keywords: ecotourism, environmental values, segmentation, Scotland

IntroductionThis paper reports on the results of a two-year research project that was

funded by a Scottish Executive Environment & rural Affairs Department (SEErAD) research grant and aimed at exploring the market niche for ecotour-ism in Scotland. A market niche is a focused, targetable part of a market, and in order to determine market niches researchers customarily employ the method of market segmentation. market segmentation consists of splitting up customers or potential customers in a market into different groups, called segments, within which they have similar requirements that can be satisfied by a different mix of marketing strategies for each group (mcDonald, 1998). In this way, market segmentation serves to determine the characteristics of a group of consumers to whom a product can be marketed, by providing information as to how this product should be designed, and how it should be promoted and distributed in order to satisfy consumer group needs.

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Ecotourists Environmental Value Segmentation

Important policy advantages can be obtained by segmenting the market for ecotourism, as operators worldwide experience clear pressures to ensure that diverse consumers receive the experiences that they anticipate. This type of information could also provide insights useful to the ongoing debate on the defi-nition of ecotourism, which in practice translates into a debate about what exactly constitutes an ecotourism experience (Higham & Carr, 2002). It seems possible that different things will comprise an experience for different types of tourists and market segmentation can help relate different ecotourism experiences to different profiles of visitors. Consequently, information on the characteristics of ecotourism segments is important from a policy perspective as it could help to improve future product development and promotion possibilities.

This research explored the market for a Scottish ecotourism experience by segmenting visitors to areas of protected natural beauty in the country on the basis of their environmental values. We argue that, although the relevance of environmental values for ecotourism has been discussed elsewhere (Diamantis, 2000; Higham et al., 2004; Lck, 2000; uysal, 1994), their use to segment ecotour-ism markets is novel. The paper starts with a review of the literature on value segmentation and on environmental values in ecotourism, goes on to present the methodology used in this study, then presents the study results, and concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for the development and promotion of ecotourism products in Scotland and a discussion regarding the use of environmental values to segment ecotourism markets.

Value Segmentation and Ecotourismrecent theory in consumer behaviour considers consumption as the mean-

ingful use that people make out of the objects with which they associate. In this context, consumption choice in postmodern societies is seen as concerned with who one is, or else who they want to identify or avoid identifying with. Life-styles are taken to reflect not only attitudes, but also values that are attached to consumptive behaviours, in a way that lifestyles get to reflect the social identi-ties of groups. This approach has been criticised in that it ignores the material constraints on peoples capacity to interpret and reinterpret the world through consumption (marsden, 1999). In other words, the fact that poorer social strata have a lower capacity than richer strata to express themselves through consump-tion limits the potential that this approach has in understanding and explaining consumptive choices. Although limited, this approach seems to be the only one that considers the existence of some sort of agency from consumption through consumptive choices and that could help understand the many faces of the consumer in the postmodern marketplace (Thomas, 1997).

under this perspective, goods are seen as social markers, which serve as building blocks of lifestyles. To find out what goods best suit which consumers, research-ers employ psychographics to examine the preferences of different consumer groups (segments). Psychographics measure the beliefs, opinions and interests of consumers by measuring the psychological (e.g. religious beliefs, opinions on crime, personality features, spare time activities) instead of demographic (e.g. age, gender, etc.) characteristics of consumers. Psychographic research segments consumers into groups according to different consumption choices by looking

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Journal of Sustainable Tourism

at personality variables and lifestyle preferences (i.e. patterns of consumption) in order to explain their propensity to consume particular goods or services (Solomon et al., 2002). To perform segmentation, psychographics focuses on one such variable (e.g. perceived benefits from green consumption) as a basis for sep-arating groups of consumers, and uses other psychographic and demographic information on them to describe each segment and identify its different consump-tion requirements that can be satisfied by different marketing mixes.

Although the relative importance of psychographic variables is far from established, the search for general models of segmenting markets upon psycho-graphic information has focused either on needs and motives, or on human values (Blamey & Braithwaite, 1997). In ecotourism research, psychographic segmen-tation studies2 have explored both paths, producing a number of interesting ecotourist segment profiles (Table 1). In particular, in the first category belongs Galloways (2002) segmentation of ecotourists in Ontario Parks on the basis of their motivation to seek sensation; Palacio and mcCools (1997) benefits seg-mentation of ecotourists in Belize; Twynnam and robinsons (1997) activity segmentation of Ontario Parks; and Weaver & Lawtons (2002) segmentation of Lamington National Park (Australia) visitors on the basis of ecotourist behaviour in the park.

Instead, Blamey and Braithwaite (1997) have taken the approach of segment-ing the potential Australian ecotourism market on the basis of their social values. They used 17 items (i.e. statements to which respondents were asked to indicate their agreement/disagreement on a seven-point scale) of the Social Values Inventory (Braithwaite & Law, 1985) that measures the endorsement of such values as national greatness, reward for individual effort, economic equality, etc. The study identified four ecotourist segments (Greens, relativists, Dualists and Libertarians) who differed on the basis of their differing levels of support for three clusters of social values, namely Development & Control, Equality & Harmony, and rights.

The Blamey and Braithwaite (1997) study exemplifies the importance of social values for understanding ecotourists and their preferences (e.g. the different preferences of segments regarding the use of park entrance fees). However, there are suggestions that environmental values in particular have been highly influential in the development of the concept of ecotourism (Wood, 2002), and there is also evidence of their influence on the development of particular types of nature-based tourism experiences (Akama, 1996, for Kenya). Environmental values are those values held by people with regard to the relationship between humans and their natural environment, typically viewed as a continuum ranging from pure anthropocentric to pure biocentric and ecocentric (e.g. Dunlap & Van Liere, 1978; Edwards-Jones et al., 2000; Lck, 2003). Anthropocentric environ-mental values, whereby nature has value mainly in its use for the continuation and improvement of human life and society, are considered to be a dominant philosophy in the Western world. Conversely, biocentric and ecocentric phi-losophies recognise an intrinsic value in all life forms and natural systems that grants them equal rights to life as humans (Edwards-Jones et al., 2000).

Although the relevance of using environmental values to conduct a psycho-graphic segmentation of ecotourists could be particularly high, it remains relatively unexplored. Diamantis (2000) explored the characteristics of uK eco-tourism

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Table 1 Segment profiles produced by recent psychographic segmentation studies in ecotourism

Study Segments

Galloway (2002) Ontario Parks, Canada

Segmentation basis: motivation push factors (sensation seeking) 1. Stress Escapers (42%)

Important issues: security in park; staff response2. Active Nature Enjoyers (31%)

Important issues: condition of campsite3. Sensation Seekers (27%)

Important issues: park performance and management

Weaver & Lawton (2002) Lamington NP, Australia

Segmentation basis: ecotourist behaviour1. Structured Ecotourists (40%)

Experience: more structured (e.g. escorted tours) and small groups; learn about nature

2. Harder Ecotourists (34%)Experience: nature-based learning, self-relied non-mediated, risky and challenging

3. Softer Ecotourists (27%)Experience: less preference for physical challenge, risk and lack of comfort

Blamey & Braithwaite (1997) Australia

Segmentation basis: social values1. Dualists (33.5%)

Social Values: Development & Control; Equality & Harmony2. Libertarians (27.5%)

Values: little regard for Equality & Harmony; high regard for the rights3. moral relativists (21.5%)

Values: not particularly supportive of any value domain4. Ideological Greens (17.5%)

Values: high support for Equality & Harmony and rights; low support for Development & Control

Palacio & mcCool (1997) Belize

Segmentation basis: benefits from ecotourism1. Comfortable Naturalists (33.3%)

Benefits: health benefits; share experiences2. Passive Players (25.9%)

Benefits: low interest on all benefits3. Nature Escapists (21.5%)

Benefits: escape to nature; appreciate-and-learn4. Ecotourists (18%)

Benefits: highest average scores for all four benefit domains

Twynnam & robinson (1997) Ontario, Canada

Segmentation basis: ecotourism activity preferences1. Enthusiasts

Setting: environment with no or low indication of human interferenceActivity: eager to try any activity (from relaxing to adventurous)

2. AdventurersSetting: remoteness and raggedness of natural environmentActivity: favour active, challenging and physically demanding outdoor sports

3. NaturalistSetting: pristine natural environmentsActivity: nature activities, visiting natural areas & unique landscapes, wildlife variety

4. EscapistsSetting: remoteness, unaltered natureActivity: importance on solitude, knowledge and learning as part of experience

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consumers by splitting them up into occasional and frequent ecotourists on the basis of their presence in natural areas (consumer involvement), and he identified that the values of both occasional and frequent ecotourists tended to have a mixture of anthropocentric, ecocentric and educational-centric stances. Likewise, Lck (2000) has suggested that environmental values are important for ecotourism travel choice and behaviour, and that ecotourist lifestyle characteristics could be signifi-cant in obtaining a better insight into these values. uysal et al. (1994) have produced empirical evidence that trip instead of demographic characteristics relate more to environmental concerns, by employing the New Environmental Paradigm (Dunlap et al., 1978) to discern the environmental concerns of visitors to a uS Virgin Islands National Park. Although not completing a segmentation study, Higham et al. (2004) used the same scale to distinguish the environmental values of visitors to ecotour-ism operations in New Zealand, and identically to uysal et al. (1994) they identified three main dimensions underlying the environmental values of visitors, namely Balance of Nature, Human Nature and Limits to Growth. These studies have established links between environmental values, the New Environmental Paradigm and ecotourism, and have used environmental values to describe the characteristics of ecotourism consumers as a whole, i.e. as an integrated category of consumers (e.g. by profiling ecotourists). However, our study differs in that it uses an updated inventory of environmental values, the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) (Dunlap et al., 2000), with the explicit aim to segment potential ecotourists on the basis of their environmental values. In other words, our study employs environmental values in order to shed light onto what happens internally in the ecotourist market, to discern different types of ecotourists based on the environmental values that they hold, and in this way it attempts to fill a gap in the literature.

MethodSegmentation studies employ statistical methods and in particular multi-

Variate Analysis (specifically the techniques of Factor and Cluster Analysis) to formulate market segments (Dolnicar, 2002). In value segmentation Principal Components Analysis (PCA) can be used to identify value dimensions that underlie responses to a number of initial value-related statements; these dimen-sions can then be used as a basis to classify respondents into groups with similar stances towards them. Cluster Analysis (CA) can be then used to group responses to those dimensions into clusters (Frochot & morrison, 2000), the market segments, which are then described according to the statistically signifi-cant differences that they present in their sociodemographic or other respondent characteristics identified by the survey.

The survey instrument comprised a seven-page questionnaire broken down into four parts. The first part identified respondent trip characteristics (main activities performed, sources of information, frequency of site visit, travel group number and composition, and duration of visit) and site of questionnaire completion.

The second part asked respondents to indicate on a five-point Likert scale their agreement with the 15 statements of the NEP that examine views concerning the relationship between humans and their environment (Dunlap et al., 2000). The NEP is a development of the older New Environmental Paradigm originally created by Dunlap and Van Liere in the late 70s (1978). There is still considerable debate as to

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what exactly the NEP measures (values, beliefs, attitudes, etc.). However, Dunlap et al. (2000) believe that the NEP can be used to tap primitive beliefs about the nature of the earth and the humanitys relationship with it (Dunlap et al., 2000: 427). They suggest that those primitive beliefs measured by the NEP appear to constitute a fundamental component of peoples belief system vis--vis the envi-ronment (Dunlap et al., 2000: 428). In our study we have considered the NEP as an inventory of stances towards nature that can be used to measure pro-envi-ronmental orientation and in this sense it can help to reveal the environmental values of ecotourists. The NEP uses a set of 15 statements (Figure 1) to identify respondent stances on five areas of public debate regarding the environment: limits to growth (items 1, 6, 11), antianthropocentrism (items 2, 7, 12), the fragility of natures balance (items 3, 8, 13), rejection of human exemptionalism (items 4, 9, 14), and the possibility of an ecocrisis (items 5, 10, 15).

The third part of the survey was intended to elicit respondent preferences towards ecotourism. A brief definition of ecotourism was used to introduce respondents to the concept, and they were then asked to indicate their predis-position (more/equally/not so keen to visit the site) to do ecotourism in the visited site. The definition of ecotourism used was borrowed from the united

1. We are approaching the limit of the number of people the earth can support

2. Humans have the right to modify the natural environment to suit their needs

3. When humans interfere with nature it often produces disastrous consequences

4. Human ingenuity will ensure that we do NOT make the earth unlivable

5. Humans are severely abusing the environment 6. The earth has plenty of natural resources if we just learn how to develop

them 7. Plants and animals have as much right as humans to exist 8. The balance of nature is strong enough to cope with the impacts of

modern industrial nations 9. Despite our special abilities humans are still subject to the laws of

nature10. The so-called ecological crisis facing humankind has been greatly

exaggerated11. The earth is like a spaceship with very limited room and resources12. Humans were meant to rule over the rest of nature13. The balance of nature is very fragile and easily upset14. Humans will eventually learn enough about how nature works to be

able to control it15. If things continue on their present course, we will soon experience a

major ecological catastrophe

Figure 1 The New Ecological Paradigm

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0 Journal of Sustainable Tourism

Nations Environment Programme (uNEP) that considers ecotourism as respon-sible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the wellbeing of local people (uNEP, 2003). Not so keen responses were low (N = 10) and they were excluded from the analysis, as the interest was on studying potential ecotourists. Further, respondents were asked to prioritise their prefer-ences towards seven ecotourism elements, also included in the uNEP website as the basic elements of ecotourism:

Contribution to conservation of biodiversity.Sustaining the well-being of local people.Inclusion of an interpretation/learning experience.Promoting responsible action on the part of tourists and the tourism industry.Delivered primarily to small groups by small-scale businesses.requiring the lowest possible consumption of nonrenewable resources.Emphasising local participation, ownership and business opportunities, particularly for rural people.

An adaptation of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique was used to identify respondent preferences towards ecotourism. Originally developed by Saaty (1980), AHP is a preference elicitation method that uses pairwise com-parisons between a number of elements to assess the relative importance of each element, with the final objective being to form a value tree that arranges their relative significance hierarchically. The process of pairwise comparisons of each element with each other used in the AHP reduces the mental bias for respondents as prioritisation is constrained to a pair of elements rather than to all attributes at the same time. In this study, an Excel-based programming model based on AHP principles was set up in order to identify visitor preferences. With the assistance of an ordinal scale ranging from one to seven, respondents compared each one of the seven uNEP elements to all others in 21 pairwise comparisons in order to express their preference for each of the attributes as an element of a future ecotourism experience (Figure 2). For each response, the geometric mean of each elements comparisons with the rest was obtained and it was used as an element weight that indicated the relative importance of the element for the respondent (for more on AHP, see Dodgson et al., 2001).

The last part of the questionnaire asked for socioeconomic and demographic data from the respondents (gender, nationality, residency, household status, occupation, NGO membership, age group, education and income).

ELEMENT A:Conserve biodiversity 1 2 4 5 6 7

ELEMENT B:Local Control

NOTE: Circling number 3 indicates that respondent considers contributing to theconservation of biodiversity a slightly more important aspect of ecotourism thansustaining the well-being of local people

3

Figure 2 Example of choice between pairwise comparisons with the AHP

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To achieve the environmental value segmentation, we performed:

a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) on the 15 NEP statements, which provided domains of environmental values around which the samples responses gathered; anda non-Hierarchical Cluster Analysis in order to segment respondents on the environmental value domains derived from the PCA.

Further, the socioeconomic and trip characteristics of the segments were con-sidered, together with their preferences towards ecotourism attributes, in order to identify those features that were significantly different between the segments. Chi-square tests were used to look for differences between segments in terms of their socioeconomic and trip characteristics, and one way ANOVA tests were performed to determine the statistical significance of segment differences regarding their ecotourism preferences.

ResultsData was collected between the end of July and the end of October 2003;

the questionnaire was kept in-site for approximately 13 weeks. A number of statutory, local authority, non-governmental, private and community-run organ-isations that run sites in Scotland where visitors go to appreciate elements of natural beauty were asked to host the survey; 20 sites run by multiple types of organisations finally agreed to dispense the questionnaire for visitors to complete it. 33% of responses came from sites operated by the Forestry Commission; 22% by the royal Society for the Protection of Birds (rSPB); 15% came from parks operated by the Highlands & Islands Local Authority; 10% by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS); 8.5% from nature tours run by private operators, and 6% from sites operated by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). These responses provided a fairly good geographical spread of nature tourism sites around Scotland, with 35% of them coming from the Highlands & the Islands, 20% from Dumfries & Galloway, 18.5% from Argyll & Bute, 11% from refrewshire and the rest from sites in Aberdeenshire, Stirlingshire, Perthsire & Kinross and Angus.

A total of 305 usable replies were obtained; 52.8% of respondents were females and 47.2% were males, 44.6% were of an age between 35 and 54 years old, and 87.2% of the sample were of British nationality (33.1% Scottish, 50.5% English). Generally speaking, these results corroborate with general profiles of ecotourists in the literature that find a more or less equal gender split (e.g. Cook et al., 1992), age ranges of mid-30s to mid-50s (e.g. Eagles & Cascagnette, 1995), and levels of 8090% of national origin (e.g. Wight, 1996).

Principal Components Analysis (PCA)A PCA on the 15 items of environmental values in the NEP was conducted

using SPSS 10.0 for Windows, in order to identify dimensions of environmen-tal values (value domains) that differentiated respondents perceptions of the character of the humannature relationship. Components with eigenvalues greater than 0.1 were examined, and solutions with three, four, and five com-ponents were considered, using Varimax rotations to improve interpretability of the components. A four-component solution was chosen at the end, as it

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satisfied the scree test for the extraction of significant factors in factor analysis, according to which the number of factors extracted depends on the point where the total variance explained begins to level off3 (Addams, 2000). In addition to that, a four-component solution also appeared to provide the most interpretable results. Following is a short description of each component (component charac-teristics illustrated in Table 2).

The first component loaded positively high on one ecocrisis (NEP 5), one balance of nature (NEP 3) and one exemptionalism(NEP 9) NEP item, thus coinciding with Factor 1 of Dunlap et al.s (2000) dimensionality test of NEP. Endorsement of the items humans abuse the environment, human interference is disastrous and humans are subject to natural laws characterise the component. This suggested a critical stance concerning current human behaviour towards nature as well as criticism of a dominating human perception in relation to nature, which stimu-lated the title criticism of human attitude to describe this component.

The second component loaded positively high on two exemptionalism (NEP 14, 4) and one balance of nature (NEP 8) items, coinciding with Factor 2 of the NEP dimensionality test. Endorsement of items humans will control nature,

Table 2 Component characteristics from the k-means cluster analysis

Component 1: Criticism of human attitude Anti-exemptionalism

Items NEP Component 1

Humans abuse the environment 0.365 NEP 5 (ecocrisis)

Human interference is disastrous 0.342 NEP 3 (balance of nature)

Humans are subject to natural laws 0.340 NEP 9 (exemptionalism)

Component 2: Confidence in human skill Cornucopia


Humans will control nature 0.398 NEP 14 (exemptionalism)

Human ingenuity is sufficient 0.359 NEP 4 (exemptionalism)

The balance of nature is strong 0.320 NEP 8 (balance of nature)

Component 3: Belief in species equality Rights-based


Plants and animals have equal rights 0.557 NEP 7 (anthropocentrism)

Humans were meant to rule 0.363 NEP 12 (anthropocentrism)

Humans have right to modify environment 0.303 NEP 2 (anthropocentrism)

Component 4: Concern with earth limits Limits


The earth has plenty of resources 0.601 NEP 6 (limits)

Earth is like a spaceship 0.446 NEP 11 (limits)

Approaching limits of earth 0.357 NEP 1 (limits)

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human ingenuity is sufficient and the balance of nature is strong that compose this component suggested some kind of a trust in human skill and confidence in what human development is heading towards. This stimulated the title confi-dence in human skill to describe this component.

The third component loaded positively high on one (NEP 7) and negatively high on two (NEP 12, 2) anthropocentric items, and coincided with Factor 4 of the NEP dimensionality test. Endorsement of the plants and animals have equal rights to humans item and disagreement with the humans were meant to rule and the humans have the right to modify the environment items indicate a rights-based approach underlying this component, and a belief in species equality as characteristic of this component.

The fourth and final component indicated a high negative loading on one (NEP 6) and high positive loadings on two (NEP 11, 1) limits items, in this way coinciding with Factor 3 of the NEP dimensionality test. Disapproval of the notion that the earth has plenty of resources and support for the idea that instead the earth is like a spaceship with limited resources and that we are approaching the limits of the earth suggested that some type of worry concern-ing the earth and its limits underlie this component, prompting the title concern with earth limits to describe it.

Cluster Analysis: The market segmentsThe next step involved a k-means Cluster Analysis (Quickcluster) that was

performed in SPSS (Version 10.0). Solutions ranging from three to eight clusters were run several times and finally a four-cluster solution was chosen as it provided an acceptable distribution of cases across the clusters and the most interpretable solution (Table 3). Negative means indicated greater levels of agreement with the NEP items that comprised each of the four components, as the scale on which those items were rated in the survey used lower numbers to express greater agreement.

The first and largest ecotourism market segment (cluster) of N = 136 (44.6%) was characterised by respondents who are critical of current human attitudes and action, supporters of species equality and of high concern for the earth and its limits, and with average confidence in human skill and development. This set of views towards the earth and human development combined with rights-based environmental values concerning human interaction with the environment (i.e. support of species equality), and it suggests that this segment relates quite strongly to traditional Green ideology, which prompted us to name the segment Disapprovers.

The second segment that emerged was the smallest in size (N = 32, 10.5%). members of this segment are not at all critical of human attitudes and action, seem confident about human skill and development and disagree that all species have equal rights; nevertheless, they indicate concern with the earth and its limits. Two things suggest that this segment resembles a more tradi-tional Anthropocentric one: first, its overall picture that seems to be pointing towards a dominance of human development and welfare environmental values (Edwards-Jones et al., 2000), and its strong rejection of ecocentric values. But the relatively strong concern expressed towards the limits of the earth introduces an additional dimension that prompted us to name this segment as Concerners.

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The third segment (N = 35; 11.5%) was a group of people clearly not critical of human attitudes and action, quite confident about human skill and devel-opment, and not concerned with the limits of the earth; effectively, this group seemed to be the reverse of the first, biggest segment. The strong confidence in current human behaviour towards the environment is a strong element in this segment that mostly consists of people that confidently approve of current patterns of human development, which prompted us to name it Approvers.

Table 3 Final Cluster Centres

Component Cluster

1 2 3 4

Criticism of Human Attitude Anti-exemptionalism 0.28 0.19 1.95 0.35

Confidence in Human Skill Cornucopia 0.11 0.18 0.48 0.38

Belief in Species Equality Egalitarianism 0.27 2.09 0.28 0.19

Concern with Earth Limits Limits 0.67 0.25 0.22 0.90

Table 4 A Four-cluster solution: Four ecotourism market segments

Members of Cluster 1 (N = 136; 44.6%): DISAPPROVERS

Critical of current human attitude and action (anti-exemptionalists)

Average confidence in human skill and development (cornucopians)

Believe in species equality (egalitarians)

Concerned with earth and its limits (concerned with limits)

Members of Cluster 2 (N = 32; 10.5%): CONCERNERS

Not critical of human attitude and action (exemptionalists)

Confident about human skill and development (cornucopians)

Significantly disagree that all species have equal rights (non-egalitarians)

Concerned with the earth and its limits (concerned with limits)

Members of Cluster 3 (N = 35; 11.5%): APPROVERS

Significantly not critical of human attitude and action (exemptionalists)

Confident about human skill and development (cornucopians)

Believe that all species have equal rights (egalitarians)

Not concerned with earth and its limits (no limits)

Members of Cluster 4 (N = 103; 33.4%): SCEPTICALS

Critical of human attitude and action (anti-exemptionalists)

Not confident of human skill and development (non-cornucopians)

Believe in species equality (egalitarians)

Not concerned with earth and its limits (no limits)

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The last segment was the second largest (N = 102; 33.4%) and was character-ised by stances critical of human attitudes and action, absence of confidence in human skill and development and a belief in species equality, that all indicated associations with Green ideologies (Blamey & Braithwaite, 1997) and ecocentric environmental values. Nevertheless, parallel to those green values that criticise human behaviour towards nature, the members of this segment strongly showed an absence of concern towards the limits of the earth and its resources. This combination of green values with a strong scepticism concerning limits issues prompted us to name this segment Scepticals.

Table 4 illustrates how environmental value domains influence the formation of the four market segments; words in parentheses indicate how each value domain corresponds (positively or negatively) to ecological paradigm dimen-sions indicated by Dunlap et al. (2000).

Socioeconomic characteristicsNo significant differences between the segments concerning residence,

household status, occupation, their membership of an NGO, or household income were reported. Overall, nearly 40% lived alone with their partners, over 40% belonged to the professional occupational category, 45% had incomes of between 20k and 50k, while nearly 70% were members of an environmental or other NGO.

On the contrary, significant differences between the segments were found in the gender, age and education levels (Table 5). Chi-square tests suggest Dis-approvers are predominantly (i.e. by 11.8% more) men, and Scepticals (i.e. by 33.4% more) women. Each of the two remaining anthropocentric clusters of Concerners and Approvers are approximately equally split between men and women. Also, Disapprovers are more or less equally spread across most age cat-egories, Scepticals are slightly younger (approximately half of them under 44) than the rest of the segments that present the highest frequencies in the 4554 age category. Approvers present a significant concentration of members in the two lowest (under 35) categories, and Concerners include a noteworthy amount of people in the older 55 to 64 age group. Overall, Scepticals and Approvers seem to include younger and Concerners slightly older people.

Finally, chi-square tests indicate significant differences in education levels. All segments report a high percentage of members with post-graduate qualifica-tions, with a particularly high figure (over 55%) for members of the Concerners segment. The ecocentric segments indicate similar levels (just above 55% for Disapprovers, above 60% for Scepticals) of members with either university or post-graduate qualifications. Although Approvers also include many members with post-graduate education (around 35%), they also include a considerable number (nearly 30%) of people that have not received more than high school education. On the whole, both Disapprovers and Scepticals present the usual profile of ecotourists, with over 50% of people having university education and above (Wight, 1996). Concerners incorporate a significant amount of people with particularly high (post-graduate) educational levels, whereas Approvers include a high proportion of people with lower educational levels.

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Table 5 Visitor characteristics significantly different between clusters (in %)

Disapprovers Concerners Approvers Scepticals Total

Gender

x 2 = 12.3 df = 3 p < 0.05

Female 44 50 49 67 53

male 56 50 51 33 47

Age

x 2 = 29.6df = 15p < 0.05

under 18 4 0 17 1 4

1834 21 6 20 24 21

3544 21 19 14 24 21

4554 23 31 29 21 23

5564 21 28 11 21 21

over 65 10 16 9 9 10

Education

x 2 = 27.6df = 12p < 0.05

Basic 15 3 11 5 10

High School 13 6 29 14 14

Further 16 22 12 19 17

university 25 13 14 26 23

Post-graduate 31 56 34 36 36

main Activities

x 2 = 25.5 df = 12 p < 0.05

activity tourism

13 15 13 21 16

hill walk & hike

11 4 34 13 14

science interest

11 23 3 7 10

relaxing 18 19 30 19 20

wildlife watching

47 39 20 40 40

Ecotourism preferences (importance of ecotourism attributes)

df = 3

Sign

0.00 biodiversity conservation

22 18 18 22 20

0.07 low use of exhaustible

17 15 17 18 17

0.52 responsible action

14 17 15 15 15

0.12 local people wellbeing

14 16 16 13 15

0.71 learn & appreciate

12 12 12 11 12

0.15 local control 11 12 12 11 11

0.24 small scale 10 10 10 10 10

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Trip characteristicsOverall, our survey indicated that the most popular activities of visitors were

wildlife watching and hill walking; nevertheless, when main activities are examined the picture is slightly different. With the exception of Approvers all other segments report wildlife watching (mostly involving bird watching) as the activity mostly practised during site visits, with levels of around 40% of segment members practising it; Approvers mostly practised main activity was hill walking & hiking. These results may reflect the profile of most sites in this survey that involved Forestry Commission Parks, rSPB and Local Nature reserves (together they comprise more than 70% of response sites), with the former and the latter being predominantly used by local residents for walking, and rSPB sites being predominantly oriented for birdwatching. But on a second level, statisti-cally significant differences in segment choice of main activities are observed, with a high proportion of Approvers (30%) opting for some type of relaxing activity, Concerners (23.1%) pursuing historical and scientific knowledge interests, and Scepticals (20.5%) opting for activity tourism (e.g. kayaking, mountainbiking, photography, etc.) pursuits as part of their site visit (Table 5).

In terms of time spent at sites, nearly 70% of visitors spent anything less than a day, with a higher concentration of time spent between two and six hours. As concerns group sizes, nearly half of the respondents went to the sites accompa-nied by only one person, while almost one quarter of them went in groups of three or four. Similarly, group composition mostly (nearly 70%) suggested that visitors went to the sites with their partner or their family. Personal experience and word of mouth still comprise the most important sources of information, followed by the more traditional way of finding out about a site of natural beauty from a tourist information centre. Finally, more than half of the respond-ents confirmed that they would be equally as keen and more than 40% that they would be even keener to visit the site as part of an ecotourism experience.

Ecotourism preferencesThe AHP was used to discern how visitors prioritised between basic elements

of ecotourism as attributes of future ecotourism experiences in sites of nature admiration in Scotland. In this way, it was used to elicit their preferences regarding future ecotourism development at such sites. Statistical tests on the results from the AHP exercise suggest that, with the exception of biodiversity preservation, differences in the way each segment prioritises the importance of ecotourism elements are not statistically significant.

A look at the means of ecotourist preferences (Table 5) and at the way each segment prioritises elements of ecotourism (Table 6) suggests that respondents consider biodiversity preservation as the most important element of ecotour-ism and that they attach the least significance to small-scale development. The segments also present a more or less uniform pattern of preferences, with most of them stressing the significance of low use of exhaustible resources as an element of ecotourism, and a slight preference towards responsible action over local wellbeing as the next significant aspects of ecotourism. Less significance is assigned to the learn-and-appreciate aspect of the activity as well as to the importance of local control for ecotourism.

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Concerning the importance of biodiversity preservation for ecotourism, one way ANOVA tests (Table 5) report significant differences between the segments. This means that, although biodiversity preservation is the most important aspect of ecotourism for all of the segments, the more ecocentric segments of Disapprov-ers and Scepticals attach more significance to it than the more anthropocentric segments of Concerners and Approvers (Figure 3). In particular, Concerners find biodiversity preservation only slightly more important than responsible action, whereas Approvers find it only marginally the most important ecotourism element (Table 5). When compared to Concerners and Approvers, Disapprov-ers and Scepticals attach higher importance to biodiversity preservation as the principal ecotourism element.

Conclusions and DiscussionOur study set out to explore the market niche for ecotourism in Scotland,

by means of conducting a market segmentation of potential ecotourists. Based on respondents environmental values revealed with the help of the NEP, four groups with different mixes of values emerged. Those groups differ in some of their sociodemographic and trip characteristics, as well as in the importance that they assign to biodiversity as the primary aspect of ecotourism. The following section discusses the implications of these study findings, by first outlining dif-ferences in the profile of the segments (Figure 4). After we discuss some policy implications of the study, and finally, we discuss what our results say regarding the relevance of environmental values, and in particular the NEP, for segment-ing ecotourist markets.

The four ecotourist segmentsOur sample was drawn from people visiting an area of natural beauty in

Scotland who expressed an interest to do ecotourism in this country. Overall, these were mainly British (87.2%), mostly English (50.5%) and Scottish (33.1%), almost equally split between males and females, of considerably high levels of formal education (almost 75% had further education and above), and predomi-

Table 6 Segment ranking of ecotourism preferences

Ecotourism preferences

Segment Mean: all segmentsDisapprovers Concerners Approvers Scepticals

Biodiversity conservation

1 1 1 1 1

Low use of exhaustible 2 4 2 2 2

responsible action 3 2 4 3 3

Wellbeing of local people

4 3 3 4 4

Learn & appreciate 5 6 6 5 5

Local control 6 5 5 6 6

Small scale 7 7 7 7 7

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nantly members of an environmental charity or organisation (nearly 70%). They principally visited sites to do wildlife watching, hill walking and relaxation and most of them (around 70%) stayed for less than a day, predominantly (70%) in groups of two, three or four persons that primarily involved members of their family (nearly 70%).

The first and biggest segment (44.6%) is the Disapprovers, named like this due to their concern about the limits of natural resources and their judgemental stance on human attitude and action towards nature. Concerning their ecotour-ism preferences, they attach a higher priority to biodiversity preservation as the most important aspect of ecotourism than Concerners and Approvers do. Their ranking of preferences suggests that they attach high values to biodiver-sity preservation and low use of exhaustible resources, and lower importance to the rest. These people are mostly male, with an average to high age (the bulk of them are between 45 and 54) and high education levels; regarding their trip characteristics, wildlife watching was a main activity they participated in during their visits to sites of natural beauty in Scotland.

The second biggest segment (33.4%) has been labelled Scepticals due to their simultaneous low concern for the limits of the earths resources and scepticism regarding human skill and capacity. regarding their ecotourism preferences, they consider biodiversity preservation as the most important aspect of eco-tourism, and more than any other segment. This ecotourism aspect, together

0.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

Segment 1 Segment 2 Segment 3 Segment 4 Mean all segments

biodiversity

biodiversity

Figure 3 Importance of biodiversity preservation through ecotourism

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0 Journal of Sustainable Tourism

with low use of exhaustible resources, seems to be for them far more important than the rest of the elements. This segment is largely composed of average to young (the bulk of them between 35 and 44) females of high education, mostly interested in viewing wildlife and doing activity tourism during their visits.

The third biggest segment (11.5%) was the Approvers, named after their high confidence in human skill and their disagreement with the criticisms of human attitudes towards nature. People in this segment hold relatively clear anthropo-centric values, and although they considered biodiversity preservation as the most important priority of ecotourism they assigned it only marginally above low use of exhaustible resources. Also, the wellbeing of local people comes higher in their priorities than in the priorities of the two ecocentric segments. Their gender composition is more or less equally split between males and females, they are relatively young (2635), with relatively low education levels, and they were primarily interested in doing hill walking and hiking as well as relaxing in the sites that they visited.

The smallest segment (10.5%) was the Concerners, people who clearly refused to consider animal and human rights as equal, but at the same time they

Disapprovers (44.6%) Concerners (10.5%)

Gender: mostly Male Gender: 50-50

Age: Average(bulk: 45-54) Age: Older

(bulk: 55-64)

Education: High Education: Very High

MainActivities: Wildlife


Biodiversity: Verysignificant Biodiversity: Slightly more

important

Ecocentric Anthropocentric

Gender: largely Female Gender: 50-50

Age: Younger(bulk: 35-44) Age: Younger

(bulk: 26-35)

Education: High Education: Lower


MainActivities: Hill Walk

Biodiversity: Verysignificant Biodiversity: Nearly not most

important

Scepticals (33.4%) Approvers (11.5%)

Figure 4 Differences between segments

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showed a concern with the earth and its limits. In their ecotourism preferences they also considered biodiversity preservation as the most important aspect of ecotourism, but attached to it the lowest significance among all segments. This is the only segment that does not consider low use of exhaustible resources as the second most important priority of ecotourism, prioritising instead respon-sible action and well-being of local people. Also their preferences are more spread than those of the other segments, with the difference between the most and the least important priorities being only 7.5% compared to nearly 13% for Scepticals. Similar to Approvers, they were nearly equally split between men and women, but in contrast to them they tend to be older (the bulk of them between 55 and 64), with particularly high levels of formal education, and their visit was geared towards wildlife watching and satisfying either a historical or a scientific interest.

Promotion and development of ecotourismThe general profile of our sample of visitors to areas of natural beauty in

Scotland who expressed a desire to do ecotourism suggests that promotion efforts should primarily focus on the British (and particularly English) market, targeting people with high levels of formal education, and mostly members of environmental groups. Products that focus on short (e.g. one day) stays for each site, adjusted to accommodate the needs of relatively small, family groups (two to four persons) could be attractive for all segments. Also, the educational levels of people interested in ecotourism are generally high and this implies that any information provided to them either through promotion or in-site could be quite specialised to correspond to these high education levels.

It is clear in our study that the largest segment affiliates with ecocentric values, the second largest predominantly ecocentric values and there is also a small segment that identifies with predominantly anthropocentric values but expresses concern with the limits of the earths resources. As a result, we note a prevalence of ecocentric values in the segments (nearly 80% of respondents) and as suggested elsewhere this prevalence should be recognised by operators seeking to achieve high levels of visitor satisfaction (Higham et al., 2001). Nevertheless, given that more than 20% of the market identifies with more anthropocentric environmental values, the appeal of ecotourism is not limited only to people holding green values, a conclusion which is also to be found elsewhere (Blamey & Braithwaite, 1997). Disregarding people less affiliated to green values who are nevertheless interested in ecotourism would not only imply losing market opportunities, but would also ignore a part of society that with appropriate information (education is a basic element of ecotourism) could be drawn into more sustainable forms of tourism.

Both objectives could be pursued through the appropriate and inclusive design of activities made available with ecotourism, i.e. with the develop-ment of different ecotourism products and relevant facilities to attract different segments. For example, both ecocentric segments and Concerners seem to have a high interest in wildlife watching, whereas Approvers are more interested in hill walking, hiking and relaxing during their visits. The importance of walking and nature watching in parts of Scotland has been pointed out also by other studies that suggest that these are activities, for which people show a particular

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preference as ways of escaping from busy lifestyles (NFO System Three, 2002). Also, Concerners seem to be highly interested in visits of a scientific and his-torical (e.g. regarding local culture) nature. Furthermore, wildlife observation facilities that stress the importance of biodiversity preservation could appeal to an older fraction of the anthropocentric part of the market that has high levels of formal education. Finally, promotion of hill walking (e.g. path improvement) in combination with less physically demanding forms of tourism (e.g. provision of picnic areas) could attract a younger fraction of the anthropocentric segments with lower levels of formal education.

Our analysis of visitor preferences regarding the importance of different elements of ecotourism indicated that there are no significant differences in the way that the segments prioritise those elements. This suggests that there is demand for facilities that primarily develop biodiversity protection as a part of a package of an ecotourism product, while emphasising low use of exhaust-ible resources on a second level; the small scale of the tourism development seems to be a low priority. Apart from emphasising this in promotional material, effort has to be made to ensure that the visitor experience includes these aspects, by means of facility design (e.g. information in the site) and perhaps education sessions that explain and exemplify the site contribution to biodiversity preser-vation and low use of exhaustible resources.

These suggestions should be considered also in the light of results from other relevant studies (A&m Training & Development, 2002) that point out that, although wildlife viewing in Scotland has considerable appeal for both national and international tourists, only 55% of facilities and sites provide help with species identification. moreover, our suggestions on the importance of empha-sising biodiversity protection in promotion and in facility design, should be considered vis--vis the results of the Stevens (2002) review of best practices for sustainable tourism in National Parks, which suggest that marketing Parks by focusing on environmental factors and sustainable products is a good promotion policy.

On the whole, our results indicate that there is visitor interest in a type of Scottish ecotourism experience that emphasises biodiversity preservation and low use of exhaustible resources in relatively specialised forms of communica-tion, while at the same time providing facilities for wildlife watching, relaxing and hill walking.

Environmental values and ecotourism segmentationOur study suggests that environmental values can be employed to mean-

ingfully segment potential ecotourists into groups of visitors with different demographic and trip characteristics. However, we found out that although different groups of ecotourists can hold different mixes of environmental values they generally agree in their prioritisation of which ecotourism elements are more important. In particular they all agree that biodiversity preservation is the most important and small-scale development of ecotourism is the least important element of the activity; also, most segments agree that low use of exhaustible resources is the second most important element of ecotourism. Nev-ertheless, more ecocentric segments attach more significance to biodiversity preservation as the most important ecotourism element than do the anthropo-

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centric segments, and this could be seen as another useful conclusion from such a segmentation study based on environmental values. In effect, as far as the use of NEP to examine attitudes towards ecotourism is concerned, our study findings seem to support Lcks view concerning the New Environmental Paradigm, which is that when the scale is applied at nature-based attractions, it seems to be of very limited use (Lck, 2003: 238). Attitudes towards ecotourism are not significantly different among our environmental-value segments, although there is some slight difference in the intensity of importance they assign to their most preferred ecotourism attribute (i.e. biodiversity conservation).

In terms of environmental values, in our study the Concerners who comprise the anthropocentric segment that is closer to ecocentric segments due to their sharing of a concern for the limits of the earth, also present trip characteristics that resemble those of ecocentric segments. These are low interest in hillwalking and hiking, medium interest in relaxing and high interest in wildlife watching. Where they are really different is in their interest in scientific and historical interest visits. Contrary to this, the Approvers, who are the most clear anthropocentric segment identified by our study, have clearly different interests in the activities that they practice, i.e. higher interest in hill walking and hiking, as well as in relaxing during their visit, and low interest in wildlife watching. Instead, although we find sta-tistically significant sociodemographic differences by age, gender and education between the environmental-value segments, these differences do not translate into more generic differences between anthropocentric and ecocentric segments. In that sense, our results seem to agree with both uysal et al.s (1994) and ryans (1999) conclusions that demographics have less of an influence on environmental values than do trip characteristics. Nevertheless, an interesting point here is that the anthropocentric segment closer to the ecocentric ones (i.e. Concerners) dem-onstrates particularly high levels of education (which could indicate that their interest in scientific and historical interest visits is no coincidence), and much higher than any of the ecocentric segments. This is in stark contrast to the purest anthropocentric segment of Approvers that includes a significant bulk of people (almost one-third) that have up to High School education.

regarding the use of NEP to identify the environmental values of ecotourists, our PCA produced four factors: two that mostly involved human characteristics and action, another that focused on the equality of species, and a last factor that concerned limits to growth. We now move on to compare these environmental value domains with those identified by Higham et al. (2004), in their use of the New Environmental Paradigm to study ecotourists, a study which according to its authors produced very similar factors to those previously identified by uysal et al. (1994). Our Criticism of Human Attitude factor is very similar to the one labelled by Higham et al. as Balance to Nature and there is also a similarity between our Concern with Earth Limits factor and their Limits to Growth factor, although different items (i.e. NEP statements) comprise our factor (also we have used the New Ecological instead of the New Environmental Paradigm). Interestingly, our Belief in Species Equality factor stands diametri-cally opposite to the Humans over Nature the most anthropocentric factor of Higham et al.s 2004 study. Instead another factor which reveals confidence in human skill and ingenuity as well as belief in the earths resilience comprises the more anthropocentric environmental value domain in our study. Overall, and

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with the exception of the Limits factor, respondents in our study seem to focus more on the importance of (positive or negative) human action and less on the actions or responses of nature when considering humannature interactions.

Environmental values could be employed to segment ecotourist markets into groups of visitors with different mixes of ecocentric and anthropocentric values, that are likely to have different trip characteristics. However, such environmental- value-based segments do not demonstrate significant differences in their attitudes towards the importance of several elements of ecotourism. Hence, an environmental value segmentation could be useful in developing different activities for different segments, which would nevertheless propagate similar conceptions of what ecotourism should be all about.

AcknowledgementsWork for this research project was carried out during the first authors

employment with the Land Economy research Group of the Scottish Agricul-tural College (SAC) in Edinburgh, Scotland, with funds provided by a Scottish Executive Environment & rural Affairs (SEErAD) research grant. We would like to thank Dave marsden for insightful comments and discussions on the limitations of postmodern marketing.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Dr Christos Zografos, universi-

tat Autnoma de Barcelona, Institut de Cincia i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Bellaterra E-08193, Barcelona, Spain ([email protected]).

Notes1. Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Congo, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, madagascar,

mexico, Peru, uSA (Vivanatura, 2005).2. For reasons of comparability to our study we only review segmentation studies based

on the collection of primary data with the explicit intention to segment ecotourism markets (i.e. not generally sustainable tourism, rural tourism, natural park visitors, etc.).

3. Variance explained by factors: Factor 1: 31.5%; Factor 2: 10.5%; Factor 3: 7.5%; Factor 4: 6.8%.

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Documents

The Environmental Values of Potential Ectourist Segmentation Process