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Impact of visit on visitors' perceptions of the environments of nature-based tourism sites

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The goal of this paper is the assessment of the impact of personal experience on visitors' perceptions of the environments of selected tourist attractions. The cognitive paradigm of environmental perception research was chosen and the Mehrabian-Russell general measure of information rate was used. Students from the University of South Bohemia from three different study programmes (faculties) were used to represent three segments: eco-tourists, neutral and mass-tourists. The research was undertaken on three tourist sites with different types of occurrences of water in their landscapes -pond, river flood plain and peat bog. All three localities are situated within the UNESCO biosphere reserve and landscape protected area of "Třeboňsko " (Třeboň area), Czech Republic. Particular sites were selected with regard to the accessibility of these sites for visitors and to their importance for the concentration of visitors. The measurements took place three times -before visit, on-site and after visit. Explanatory factor analysis revealed three factors of perception -spaciousness, novelty and complexity. These factors differ among localities and each site had a different impact on the site perception of visitors. In the case of spaciousness, it was found that the visit had no impact on visitor perception. Visitation influenced the perception of novelty in the same way at two of the sites- both localities, after visitation, were perceived as being more novel. Visitation also influenced perception of complexity; this time, however, in different ways that were dependant on the uniqueness of each site.
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
Abstract
Introduction
Josef Navrátil, Kamil Pícha,
Josef Rajchard and Jana Navrátilová
Impact of visit on visitors'
perceptions of the environments of
nature-based tourism sites
e goal of this paper is the assessment of the impact of personal experience on visitors'
perceptions of the environments of selected tourist attractions.  e cognitive paradigm of
environmental perception research was chosen and the Mehrabian-Russell general measure
of information rate was used. Students from the University of South Bohemia from three
di erent study programmes (faculties) were used to represent three segments: eco-tourists,
neutral and mass-tourists.  e research was undertaken on three tourist sites with di erent
types of occurrences of water in their landscapes – pond, river  ood plain and peat bog. All
three localities are situated within the UNESCO biosphere reserve and landscape protected
area of "Třeboňsko" (Třeboň area), Czech Republic. Particular sites were selected with
regard to the accessibility of these sites for visitors and to their importance for the concentra-
tion of visitors.  e measurements took place three times – before visit, on-site and after
visit. Explanatory factor analysis revealed three factors of perception – spaciousness, novelty
and complexity.  ese factors di er among localities and each site had a di erent impact
on the site perception of visitors. In the case of spaciousness, it was found that the visit had
no impact on visitor perception. Visitation in uenced the perception of novelty in the same
way at two of the sites– both localities, after visitation, were perceived as being more novel.
Visitation also in uenced perception of complexity; this time, however, in di erent ways
that were dependant on the uniqueness of each site.
Keywords:
tourism; experience; perception; environment; Třeboň basin; Czech Republic
UDC: 338.481.1(437.1/.2)
Nature attractions constitute a basis for the competitiveness of a destination (Ritchie
& Crouch, 2003). However, these localities are also important from the scienti c or
social-cultural point of view and are, hence, very often protected by society. Conse-
quently, it means that management of such environments must meet two contradic-
tory requirements: to contribute to the limiting human impact on these environments
and to make them accessible for visitors (Marion & Reid, 2007).
Josef Navrátil, PhD, Faculty of Economics, Department of Trade and Tourism, České Budějovice, Czech Republic;
E-mail: josefnav@gmail.com
Kamil Pícha, PhD, Faculty of Economics, Department of Trade and Tourism, České Budějovice, Czech Republic;
E-mail: kpicha@ef.jcu.cz
Josef Rajchard, PhD, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Biological Studies, České Budějovice, Czech Republic;
E-mail: rajchard@zf.jcu.cz
Jana Navrátilová, PhD, Institute of Botany, Department of Functional Ecology, Třeboň, Czech Republic;
E-mail: janaernestova@seznam.cz
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
e situation of tourism is, however, di erent from that of e.g. industrial activities,
because "[t]he world's tourism and recreation industry provides considerable bene ts
to protected areas and the communities adjacent to or within them" (Bushell, & Mc-
Cool, 2007, p. 12). On the other hand, "tourism can contribute to the deterioration
of cultural landscapes, threaten biodiversity, contribute to pollution and degradation
of ecosystems. . . " (Bushell & McCool, 2007, p. 12). Tourism activities act upon its
environment through a wide scale of impacts (Geneletti & Dawa, 2009; Heydendael,
2002; Marion & Leung, 2001; Nepal & Nepal, 2004), and the degree of impacts is
dependent upon a wide spectrum of environment properties, recently comprehensively
reviewed by Pickering (2010).  erefore, only planned and managed tourism can
bring about real bene ts to the environment (Bushell & McCool, 2007; Monz, Mari-
on, Goonan, Manning, Wimpey & Carr, 2010). Visitors to such environments are the
keystones of the appropriate planning management (Goeldner & Ritchie, 2009; Veal,
2002) because "without visitors, without satis ed visitors, parks and protected areas
will cease to exist" (Bushell, Stai & Eagles, 2007).
Particularly, it is so in the case of waters that co-create the landscape's character (Gabr,
2004) and its appearance is crucial to the way in which visitors perceive the value of
the nature attraction (Real, Arce & Sabucedo, 2000; Sundstrom, Bell, Busby, & As-
mus, 1996). Nature attractions also serve as a refuge for those biotopes being endan-
gered by human activity (Chytrý, Kučera & Kočí, 2001) and for species of organism
related to those biotopes (Kučera, 2005).  ese reasons help to make speci c forms of
water occurrences in mountainous landscapes a sought after destination for visitors.
Opening up accessibility is, however, quite regularly in violation of the interests of na-
ture and landscape protection (Christ, Hillel, Matus & Sweeting, 2003).
Visitors to the di erent types of tourism destinations (Ritchie & Crouch, 2003) are
motivated to visit for a variety of di erent reasons (Bansal & Eiselt, 2004). Groups
behave, thereafter, in the visited environment in di erent ways (Horner & Swarbooke,
1996). A stay in the ambience of large protected areas is, most often, motivated by
the possibility to stay in undisturbed nature and to experience the feeling of being in
an undisturbed environment. Nature-based tourism is conditional on the existence of
a natural environment – i.e. particularly protected areas of nature and above all nati-
onal parks. It is, thus, of importance for every form of tourism in which activities are
linked to the natural environment. It is, however, usually the case in natural landscape
protection, that support is only given where the tourism meets certain conditions of
sustainability and which are devoid of negative impacts on that environment (Dudek
& Kowalcyk, 2003). Ecotourism di ers from mass nature-based tourism, above all in
a protectionist aspect, as the tourist becomes, instead of a passive visitor, an active con-
tributor to the sustainable exploitation of a tourist attraction (Sjøholt, 2000). Another
condition of ecotourism is in using resources in a way which is advantageous for local
communities (Epler Wood, 2002) and, also, in increasing a visitor's motivation to get
some knowledge about the place he/she has visited (Dudek & Kowalczyk, 2003); par-
ticularly to understand the cultural and natural history of the visited site (Epler Wood,
2002).
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
Perceptions
and previous
experience
e aim of the presented paper is to contribute to the enlargement of our knowledge
on forming assumptions for the environmentally friendly behaviour of tourists in the
destination.  e importance of such a work consists in a generally accepted premise
that an informed tourist is always more likely to ask for a nature-based destination and
a detailed knowledge of the structure of tourists' relations to the partial elements of
landscape can enable such sustainable management as it is advantageous for the land-
scape, nature, culture and tourism (Geneletti & Dawa, 2009).
Perception of the environment is one of the above-mentioned elements and, in tou-
rism, represents one of the factors in building the destination image (Naoi, Airey,
Iijima & Niininen, 2006), which is "formed through the consumer's rational and
emotional interpretation" (Royo-Vela, 2009, p. 420). It manifests itself analogically
through the 'wants' (Naoi et al., 2006), which are a 'manifestation of needs' (Naoi
et al., 2006).  us, they a ect also the motivation to visit (Gnoth, 1997; Goossens,
2000). Both image and motivation were identi ed to be key elements of satisfaction
with a visit (Bigné, Sánchez & Sánchez, 2001; Chen & Tsai, 2007; Lee, Lee & Lee,
2005; Qu & Ping, 1999; Yoon & Uysal, 2005).  is is crucial in the process of the
maintenance of visitor rate; above all, for reason of an identi ed connection with the
further behaviour of customers – a satis ed visitor comes back and/or gives positive
word-of-mouth feedback to others (e.g. Gupta, McLaughlin & Gomez, 2007; He &
Song, 2009; Jang & Feng, 2007; Oppermann, 2000; Wu & Liang, 2009).
Perception of the environment is, however, also important during the visit itself, be-
cause it represents a form of opportunity for quality assessment. "Quality is concep-
tualized as a measure of a provider's output" (Baker & Crompton, 2000, p. 787) and
"evaluations of the quality of performance are based on visitors' perceptions of the
performance of the provider" (Baker & Crompton, 2000, p. 787). Perceived quality in
tourism studies is, in almost all cases, linked with the assessment of perceived quality
of services (e.g. Baker & Crompton, 2000; Chen & Tsai, 2007; He & Song, 2009;
Petrick, 2004a). However, in nature-based attractions there are often no services on
o er and quality as 'performance of provider' could be understood as the action of the
environment on the visitor as a whole.  us, perception of environment could be un-
derstood as perception of quality, because the place itself, or the scenery, is what visi-
tors want to see, which is a common theme identi ed in landscape planning literature
when discussing this issue (e.g. Palmer & Hofmann, 2001). Quality, also, is another
important point a ecting the visitor's satisfaction (Baker & Crompton, 2000; Chen &
Tsai, 2007; Duman & Mattila, 2005; He & Song, 2009; Petrick, 2004b).
In the study of perception of environment, a large number of paradigms are accepted
(Taylor, Zube & Sell, 1987; Uzzell, 1991). However, the most relevant approaches
in tourism follow the psychophysical and cognitive paradigms (Fyhri, Jacobsen &
Tømmervik, 2009). Research within the cognitive paradigm was focused  rst on the
nding out of the structure of elements participating on the evaluation of the environ-
ment, especially utilizing the information rate measure developed by Mehrabian and
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
Russell (1974). In perception, novelty plays an important role in the cross-fade of
two elements: preference-for-prototypes and preference-for-di erences (Peron, Purcell,
Staats, Falchero & Lamb, 1998). Among other most common goals of studying per-
ception of environment we  nd identi cation of factors of perceived aesthetical values
(e.g. Real et al., 2000). Generally considered to be more interesting or more beautiful
are those places with an abundance of natural or close-to-nature landscape elements
(e.g. Fyhri et al., 2009) ; picturesque scenes connected with landmarks of any type;
as well as the harmony between natural and cultural substances of the environment
(Gabr, 2004).
e impact of visitation on a visitor's site or destination perception has been previ-
ously studied, especially within the branch of research of image formation (e.g. Hsu,
Wolfe & Kang, 2004). A review of this topic has recently been made by Tasci and
Gartner (2007, see table 2 on p. 419) with the conclusion that results of particular
studies diverge, but researchers, altogether, "agree that visiting results in more realistic
images due to a  rsthand experience of the product" (Tasci & Gartner, 2007, p. 418).
erefore, we can, also, consider perception of the environment to be important for
the visit rate in case of the nature-based destinations, because perception is, among
others, in uenced by the visitor's experience with the site.  e goal of this paper is,
therefore, the assessment of the impact of experience on the perception of the tourist
attractions' environment. Our hypothesis is:  e impact of experience manifests itself
di erently in di erent environments.
STUDY AREA
e impact of a visit on perception of a tourism site was assessed in three localities
within the area of the Třeboň Basin in Southern Bohemia (Czech Republic), close to
the border with Austria.  e Třeboň Basin is a relatively upland (400–500 m a. s. l.)
plane with a border of hilly country. It has, through its climate, character and land-
scape exploitation a markedly submontane character. With regards to its soil (acid
non-productive substrate created largely by Cenozoic lake sediments) and hydrological
conditions (lot of mineral poor sources; peat-bogs; large wetlands in place of slowed-
down run-o , ameliorated into the numberless quantity of ponds) it remains and
continues to be an economically marginal area with low population density. Due to
these conditions, a unique and extensive cultural landscape has survived here, which is
designated as a protected landscape area and UNESCO Biosphere reserve. Two large
Ramsar localities are also situated here – Třeboň Peatbogs and Třeboň Ponds. For this
reason, it is considered as an important tourism area of national signi cance. In the
perception of visitors, the Třeboň area is predominantly a region of ponds and undis-
turbed natural environments (Navrátil, 2008). As the 'undisturbed state' is preserved,
particularly by the existence of wetlands, we have chosen to achieve our goal in the fol-
lowing environments – ponds, peat bogs and wetlands, which are important elements
of the area's image (Navrátil, 2008). Particular sites were selected with regard to the
Methods
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
accessibility of these sites for visitors and to their importance in terms of the concen-
tration of visitors.
• Locality 1: observation point towards a  lling hollow after the extraction of peat,
with the following succession: water – submerged mosses – bushy vegetation; which
is framed from all sides by a Pinus rotundata bog forest in the National natural reser-
ve Červené blato and is accessible due to an educational trail.
• Locality 2: view of a large water level of the pond Svět (in English ' e World') from
the pond's dam, close to the town-centre of Třeboň.  is place belongs to the main
rest points for the town's visitors and makes a part of two educational trails – the
cycling one called 'Round the town Třeboň' and the footpath 'Round the pond Svět'.
Svět pond is ranked, next to the biggest pond Rožmberk, among the most widely
known in the Czech Republic and it is one of the icons of the area (Navrátil, 2008).
• Locality 3: view of a large  ood plain of the river Lužnice, a winding river with mo-
saic of wetland willow carr with undergrowth of high sedges and rushes, and with
occurrence of water birds.  e view point is situated at the so called 'Novořecká
dam', close to three large protected areas (National natural reserve Stará řeka, Natural
reserve Novořecké močály, Natural reserve Meandry Lužnice).  e Novořecká dam is
an important tourist route between southern and northern parts of the Třeboň tou-
rist region.
A further reason why these localities were chosen is that they are often represented in
promotional materials of this area.  is enables, also, the use of the results of this re-
search to create a visual presentations of the destination (Hunter, 2008).
SELECTION OF RESPONDENTS
is area is predominantly visited by those who are motivated by seeking a rest in the
form of a stay in an undisturbed 'natural' environment. A high number of these visits
are to environmentally important sites and these visitors are, also, largely motivated by
a desire to gain more knowledge of these areas (Navrátil, 2008).  at is why the three
groups of respondents were selected – with regards to the coverage of the customer
continuum in relation to the 'natural' fundamental of the visited ecosystems and its
crucial importance for the visit rate of such an important tourist area.
It is usual in analogical tests that students are exploited for the research – see e.g.
analysis of Palmer and Hofmann (2001) – this is also the case in tourism (Chhetri,
Arrowsmith & Jackson, 2004).  e correspondence in opinions between students and
other groups has been demonstrated in previous studies (Palmer, 2000). So, university
students from di erent study programmes within the University of South Bohemia
were chosen for our research: (1) students of business studies representing 'mass-tour-
ists', (2) students of ecology representing 'eco-tourists' and (3) students of agriculture
representing the 'neutral'.  e selection of students of di erent orientations of study is
usual in order to achieve diversity in results (ten Klooster, Visser & de Jong, 2008).
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
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RESEARCH APPROACH
e cognitive paradigm was chosen in order to achieve the de ned aim, because it
starts from the fact, that "humans are thinking creatures who do not merely respond
passively to environmental stimuli, but select aspects of the landscape that have value
to them" (Taylor et al. 1987, p. 375).  e Mehrabian-Russell general measure of in-
formation rate is used in our study because it "is a measure of how much information
(or environmental load) is perceived to exist in an environment" (Amato & McInnes,
1983, p. 113).  e 14 seven-point semantic di erential scales are employed, as cor-
rected by Donovan and Rossiter (1982).
e ratings on the Mehrabian-Russell scale were based on photographs of each locali-
ty as this is one of the basic tools for studying perception of environment (Fairweather
& Swa eld, 2001); photographs serve to act as a stimulus for the respondent (Naoi
et al., 2006).  e subject for discussion is the reliability and validity of such measure-
ments (Palmer & Hofmann, 2001); however, this has been con rmed several times in
previous studies (e.g. Brown & Daniel, 1987; Pitt & Zube, 1979). " e evidence sug-
gests that respondents correctly interpret photographs presented to them as indicators
of the 'real' landscape, and make their evaluation on that basis" (Fairweather & Swaf-
eld, 2001, p. 220).
Respondents were  rst called to decide, via an electronic questionnaire during March
2010, how they perceived photographs of three selected sites (1600 x 1200 px) – the
scales mentioned above were used for the assessment. During the second half of April
and  rst half of May 2010, students visited, in groups of approximately 20 respon-
dents and under the guidance of the  rst author, the three localities where the pho-
tographs were taken. Each group visited all three localities within the same day. On
arrival at each locality, students were acquainted with the concrete site (its history,
tourism, economic, environmental and cultural importance) and they were asked be-
fore their departure to complete a questionnaire. Finally, respondents had to send a
completed electronic questionnaire, which was identical to that completed prior to the
excursion, within 5 days following the excursion. In total, 125 respondents were asked
and 79 completed questionnaires were returned from all three groups.
To explain variability of the data, which issued from respondents themselves, the
behaviourist segmentation criteria were employed (Goeldner & Ritchie, 2009) – en-
vironment protection in the lifestyle, typical recreation activities exercised when travel-
ling and belonging to a group of watermen and  shermen.  e tool for measuring
environmental awareness was constructed based on the results presented by Ballantyne,
Packer, and Hughes (2008) asking respondents to rate how closely a list of attitudes
and practices described them on a  ve-point scale ranging from 1 (does not describe
me at all) to 5 (describes me perfectly). Four categories were used: I use environmen-
tally friendly products; I recycle at home; I do volunteer work for groups who help the
environment; I actively search for information about environmental conservation.  e
same statements and the same scale were used for the statements 'I am a waterman'
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
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and 'I am a  sherman'.  e tool for measuring recreational activities (participation on
activities) was taken from Navrátil, Pícha, and Hřebcová (2010).  e implication in
recreational tourism activities was measured on a  ve point Likert-type scale where 1 =
not participate, 5 = de nitely participate.  e list of activities consists of 9 items: well-
ness or spa; sightseeing (castle, chateau, etc.); visiting museums, art gallery, festivals,
etc.; shopping; to enjoy myself; resting; wildlife watching; recreational cycling; recre-
ational sport activities.  e questionnaire was completed with questions on respon-
dent's sex and relationship to the history of the sites (Navrátil et al., 2010).
DATA ANALYSIS
To test the hypothesis, the overall variation pattern in answers of all respondents from
all measurement made on the Mehrabian-Russell information rate scale has to be as-
certained.  e dataset forms a seemingly incomprehensible and impenetrable mass of
information in which we wanted to uncover the relationships (if there were any) of
perception items. Multivariate data analysis techniques were considered to evaluate
this state (Podani, 2000).  us, the overall variation pattern is performed by gradient
analysis and by looking for the greatest variability that could be visualized using the or-
dination diagrams (ter Braak & Šmilauer, 2002). Principal components analysis (PCA)
performed by CANOCO 4.5 package (ter Braak & Šmilauer, 2002) was used. No
transformations were made before the analysis.
Factors of site perception were identi ed by explorative factor analysis.  e principal
components analysis method was employed and only the factors with an eigenvalue
greater than 1 were assessed, and the results were varimax rotated (Robinson, 1998).
Reliability for each multi-item factor was obtained using the calculation of Cronbach's
alpha coe cient (Peterson, 1994).  en, for each of the factors for each locality and
each measurement (before visit, on site, after visit) the composite mean was calculated,
i.e. average value for the factor from values of items loaded at least with value of 0.6 on
this factor (Chen & Tsai, 2007).
As it is a matter of three repeated measurements (before a visit, during the visit and
after the visit), the di erences were  rst tested in the run of factor values for particular
factors among localities using repeated measures analysis of variance (RMANOVA).
e values for factors of perception on each locality obtained from measurements be-
fore the visit and after the visit were tested with the null hypothesis stating that there
is no di erence in site perception for each locality, using the Student's t-test for two
dependant groups (Robinson, 1998).
en, for each factor the di erence between composite mean for this factor obtained
after the visit and before the visit was calculated.  ese di erences were considered as
dependent variables in uenced by the type of visitor.  e selection of visitors' charac-
teristics was decided by means of the multiple linear regression (Nusair & Hua, 2010)
using the forward selection method for selection of independent variables (characteris-
tics of visitors). First run of forward selection was performed and then the data were
purged from outliers. Consequently, the process of forward selection was repeated.
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
e model was assessed based on the partial regression graphs and partial residual
graphs and the method was assessed by means of F-test of importance of a regression
model (Meloun & Militký, 2006). Factor analysis, reliability tests, RMANOVA and
Student's t-test were calculated using STATISTICA 8.1 software package.
e rst two axes in PCA of the complete dataset explain most of the variability in
data (49.5%, Figure 1). We can see that the  rst gradient is by far the longest one,
explaining about 38.3 % of the total variability in perception of localities by respon-
dents.  is main gradient can be interpreted as the environments of localities, because
the locality 'pond Svět' (with predominating water level) was separated along this axis
from the two remaining localities (with predominating wetland vegetation). Existence
of water is one of the main factors in uencing the preference in an environment. Sepa-
rated from each other along the second axis were 'Meandry Lužnice' and 'Červené
blato'.  e main variability in data is, thus, given by localities and not by the way of
measuring.
Figure 1
OVERALL PATTERN OF PERCEPTION OF STUDY SITES BY RESPONDENTS DESCRIBED
BY PCA ORDINATION DIAGRAM
e employed scale is pertinent to achieving the de ned objective as all characteristics
of Mehrabian-Russell's general measure of information rate were loaded with the value
Results and
discussion
Meandry Lužnice
Červené blato pond SvĕtLocality:
Axis 2
Axis 1
1.5-1.5
2.0-2.0
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
of at least 0.5 on any factor. In our sample, four factors of environment perception
(Table 1) were revealed, that are quite consistent with the three dimensions discussed
by Mehrabian and Russell (1974).  e results could be, however, in uenced by the
selection of respondents, as students have been assessing the environment within their
obligatory lessons.  erefore, an impact of respondents' polarization could manifest
itself in the continuum, screeners – non-screeners (Mehrabian, 1977).
is is perhaps the reason that the most important factor –  rst with eigenvalue of
5.28 and 37.7 % variance explained – is not 'novelty' as expected but 'spaciousness',
because most of the spaciousness items were loaded onto this factor (sparse-dense, un-
crowded-crowded, simple-complex) as well as two of the 'complexity' factors (homoge-
neous-heterogeneous, redundant-varied), which have the character of 'variety' (Dono-
van & Rossiter, 1982).  e second factor is identical to Mehrabian-Russell's 'novelty'
factor (Donovan & Rossiter, 1982), because the items usual-surprising, common-rare,
and familiar-novel were loaded on this factor with factor loading greater than 0.6.  e
third factor is very similar to Mehrabian-Russell's 'complexity' factor (Donovan &
Rossiter, 1982) with items of continuous-intermittent, patterned-random, and symet-
rical-asymmetrical loaded on this factor. Similar to results of Donovan and Rossiter
(1982), the single item of 'size' was found in our fourth factor on which the item small
scale-large scale was loaded.
Only items distant-immediate and similar-contrasting were not loaded on any factor
with value greater than 0.6.  is is the case also in Donovan and Rossiter's (1982)
work.  ey concluded that "these information-rate measures may not by appropriate
T
able1
FACTORS OF SITE PERCEPTION
Spaciousness Novelty Complexity Size
Sparse-dense 0.848
Uncrowded-crowded 0.833
Redundant-varied 0.671
Simple-complex 0.663
Homogeneous-heterogeneous 0.608
Usual-surprising 0.733
Familiar-novel 0.749
Common-rare 0.715
Distant-immediate -0.573
Continuous-intermittent 0.833
Patterned-random 0.763
Symmetrical-asymmetrical 0.666
Similar-contrasting 0.538
Small scale-large scale 0.813
Eigenvalue 5.278 1.529 1.245 1.024
% Total Variance 37.703 10.924 8.890 7.313
Cronbachs alpha 0.849 0.756 0.779 -
Items Factors
16
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Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
measures of information rate in retail environments because subjects may be applying
the di erent adjectives to quite di erent and speci c aspects of the situation" (Dono-
van & Rossiter, 1982, p. 48). However, that is not the case here. In case of the distant-
immediate item, the reason could consist of a di erent perception of 'distance' – in
the absolute or relative sense (Knox & Marston, 2001).  e problem of the similar-
contrasting item is in its pure relativity and the uncertain expression of 'to what are
we comparing the similarity?'  e reliability of the  rst three factors is greater than 0.7
(Table 1), so they are useful for further analysis.
Between-subject e ect (localities), within-subjects e ect (measurements), as well
as between-subject *within-subjects e ects (measured sequences for localities) of
RMANOVA were signi cant for all three factors (Table 2).  e character of a locality
has, therefore, an impact on the di erences in perception of all three main dimensi-
ons used when perceiving the environment (Donovan & Rossiter, 1982) in the  eld
and from photographs before and after the visit. Di erences in the between-subject
analysis con rmed, in the case of all factors, the results of PCA. Di erences in the
sequence of measurement (within-subject e ect) are mostly caused by dissimilarity in
the measurement of perceiving photographs and of perception in the  eld. However,
we cannot see in this result a low validity of measurement of perceiving photographs
and of perception in the  eld, but rather we see the impact of environmental character,
because the changes in perception do not act in the same way in particular localities
across particular factors (compare measurement among factors in Figure 2). Despite
this, the impact of the di erence between a photograph and confrontation with a
real site plays a certain role.  is di erence is indicated in the factor of 'spaciousness'.
No di erence was found in the case of the locality 'Červené blato', i.e. locality with
a horizon enclosed from all sides by the barrier of forest in a relatively short distance
and with a rich mosaic of vegetation cover. On the contrary, the highest di erence was
measured in the case of 'pond Svět' with a dominant large homogenous water level,
which is disturbed only by a small island. Here, the impact of the di erence in line of
vision between a camera and the naked human eye was manifest as, in the  eld, the
locality was signi cantly more greatly perceived as being more space-di erentiated. No
di erences, for any locality, were found in the perception of "spaciousness" before and
after the visit (Table 3).
ere is a di erent situation in case of the factor 'novelty'. Between-subject *within-
subjects e ects (measured sequences for localities) of RMANOVA for all three loca-
T
able 2
DIFFERENCES AMONG FACTORS OF PERCEPTION –
RESULTS OF RMANOVA, F-VALUES WITH LEVELS OF SIGNIFICANCE
Fp Fp Fp
Between-subject effect 157.929 0.000 68.630 0.000 110.443 0.000
Within-subjects effect 9.250 0.000 33.992 0.000 6.763 0.001
Between * within effect 36.755 0.000 3.278 0.011 7.842 0.000
Spaciousness Novelty Complexity
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
lities is signi cant, but it does not di er for the localities 'Meandry Lužnice' and
'Červené Blato' (RMANOVA, F=1.710, p=0.183). In case of both these locations,
a high level of surprise was measured, which manifested itself even in the evaluation
of the 'novelty' after the visit – in case of 'Meandry Lužnice' the di erence noted be-
fore and after the visit was identi ed as signi cantly important. Although it is shown
that there was a decrease (statistically not important) in the case of the 'pond Svět',
we can see in the change expressed for both 'Meandry Lužnice' and 'Červené Blato'
the impact of awareness of the importance of these localities on the visitors' level of
surprise. Respondents were acquainted within their visit with functions of these locali-
ties in the ecosystem and with their importance for preserving the biodiversity.  is is
information which most respondents did not have at the moment of evaluation when
perceiving a photograph before the visit to the pictured place. It was, for respondents,
a photograph of a locality with an unknown importance and it was evaluated purely
visually (compare the results of Kent & Elliott, 1995, p. 347).  e impact of visitors'
awareness on their environmental consciousness (although statistically not signi cant
for both localities) was, thus, con rmed.
Figure 2
MEANS AND 95% CONFIDENCE INTERVALS FOR EACH MEASUREMENT
FROM EACH LOCALITY FOR EACH PERCEPTION FACTOR
e measurements of 'complexity' factor led to mixed results.  e perception of 'pond
Svět' resulted in a similar pattern to the measurement of 'spaciousness'.  e impact
of the visit on the perception of 'complexity' was proved in case of both 'Meandry
Lužnice' and 'Červené blato' (Figure 2, Table 3).  is impact cannot be (and there is
Novelty
before visit on site after visit before visit on site after visit
before visit on site after visit
Complexity Spaciousness
Červené blato
Svĕt
Meandry Lužnice
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
no reason it should be), however, caused by the awareness, because the visit led to the
decrease of 'complexity' perception in case of 'Červené blato' but to the increase in case
of 'Meandry Lužnice'.  e degree of the change is, thus, instigated by the environment
of the destination itself, which is globally di erent from that of the photograph.
Segmentation criteria that could be obtained with regard to the respondents' origins
have no fundamental impact on the di erence of composite means of revealed fac-
tors before and after the visit.  e result of multiple linear regression is, in all cases,
signi cant indeed, but the percentages of the explained variability are relatively low
('spaciousness': F=5.53, p<0.01, adjusted R2=0.04; 'novelty': F=4.16, p<0.05,
adjusted R2=0.01; 'complexity': F=10.08, p<0.001, adjusted R2=0.10). Only in
case of complexity was there found a higher importance of segmentation criteria. After
visiting particular localities, those respondents who have a better relation to the history
(b=-0.26, t=-2.57, p<0.05), do more cycling (b=0.37, t=4.37 p<0.001)than
hiking (b=-0.38, t=-3.77 p<0.001), perceive these localities as more complex.
Analogically (although less importantly), looking at the predictors of assessment of
'spaciousness' – its values have also increased for respondents with a higher interest in
history (b=-0.16, t=-2.35, p<0.05), but shows lower participation on the observing
of nature (b=-0.14, t=-2.41, p<0.05). Respondents who are characterized by a bet-
ter relation to the history and prefer cycling more than hiking are recording responses
which are nearer to those of the mass-tourists than eco-tourists.  ese respondents as-
sess these localities, based on a visit to the localities, to be more diverse, more complex
and more incoherent – in that we could see the impact of the acquired knowledge of
the basics of the localities, which was not known for them at the moment of their  rst
assessment.  e research has demonstrated the impact of knowledge on the visitor's
higher environmental consciousness and, therefore, we can conclude that there will
also be a contribution to the development of sustainability in tourism.
T
able 3
DIFFERENCES IN FACTORS OF PERCEPTION BEFORE AND AFTER VISIT
Before visit After visit
Spaciousness
Červené blato 4.58 ± 1.02 4.69 ± 0.94 -1.056
Pond Svět 2.61 ± 0.87 2.74 ± 0.81 -1.703
Meandry Lužnice 5.86 ± 0.90 5.86 ± 0.84 0.000
Novelty
Červené blato 4.19 ± 1.50 4.35 ± 1.20 -1.102
Pond Svět 2.56 ± 1.20 2.38 ± 0.12 1.169
Meandry Lužnice 3.26 ± 1.46 3.83 ± 1.33 -3.339 **
Complexity
Červené blato 4.84 ± 1.16 4.57 ± 1.23 1.986 *
Pond Svět 2.44 ± 1.04 3.35 ± 0.91 0.686
Meandry Lužnice 3.81 ± 1.37 4.22 ± 1.36 -2.529 *
** p<0.01
* p<0.05
Mean ± S.D. t-value
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TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
Our study examines the e ect of a visitation to a tourist site on visitor perception of
that site, as previous research found mixed results (Tasci & Gartner, 2007).  e e ect
was studied on three water-enhanced attractions employing Mehrabian-Russell's gene-
ral measure of information rate (Donovan & Rossiter, 1982). Students were subjects
for this research and the measurements of site perception were conducted three times
– through photograph before visit, on-site during visit and through photograph after
the visit. Adequacy of the employed scale was veri ed by extraction of the anticipated
factors of spaciousness, novelty, and complexity.
Di erences in the impact of visit have been found for di erent factors of perception.
e visit to the locality has no impact on perception of spaciousness. As particular
localities di ered one from another in the di erence of values found for photographs
and on-site evaluation, this factor could be used as a tool to assess the degree of ade-
quacy of using photographs instead of on-site research. Based on our research, the
degree of disparity in evaluation of photographs and on-site evaluation is given by the
distance of horizon.
Di erences in perceiving the environment before and after the visit were found in the
cases of 'novelty' and 'complexity'.  e impact of visitor's awareness on the perception
of the attraction, concretely through the factor of 'novelty', was con rmed. On the
contrary, the factor 'complexity' is a factor of perception, which is in uenced by the
visit and a visitor's own evaluation of the site.
e most important  nding of our study for destination management is the possibili-
ty to in uence visitors' awareness of the importance of the locality. An informed client
is able to assess the diversity of the environment and build up such relations with the
sites which predetermine future environmentally friendly behaviour.  is is a funda-
mental for a sustainable use of protected areas for tourism, which is one of the main
objectives of the management of visits to protected areas. In order to disseminate
information on the importance of protected areas of nature, information boards are
mostly used.  eir impact is, however, very low. It is usual to visit a chateau, castle,
ruin, museum or gallery being led by a guide. However, in the case of natural monu-
ments, such o erings are still very limited; visitors do not consider it usual for a guide
to be present in sites with natural monuments and, therefore, do not ask for them and
do not widely use such a service (Navrátil, 2008).
e presented research has, however, also certain limitations that are related,  rst
of all, to the research methodology.  e main limitation results from the sample of
respondents that is represented by students of a public university.  e selection of re-
spondents was limited only by one criterion – relation to the environment represented
by a study programme frequented by respondents. It does not enable us, therefore, to
evaluate the impact of in-tourism-common segmentation criteria on the structure of
changes in tourists' experience. Another limitation in the possibility to generalize the
results consists in the selection of locations for questioning. In case of perception in
tourism, it is important to keep in mind that its impact was tested based on the experi-
Conclusions
20
TOURISM ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER J. Navrátil, K. Pícha, J. Rajchard and J. Navrátilová
Vol. 59 No 1/ 2011/ 7-23
ences of respondents originating from Central Europe in locations of Central Europe
and, therefore, in a landscape which is common to them.  e results are thus restricted
to one cultural environment. It should be acknowledged that analyzed locations are
small from the geographical point of view and they cannot match with the analogical
elements acting as self-existent tourist attractions (e.g. at random Yellowstone park or
Okavango).
Results achieved through our research could, however, constitute a basis for consecu-
tive research within the de ned topic. Probably the most interesting seems to be a test
of the impact of the visit on the structure of perception of the environmental impor-
tance of nature-based tourist attractions by their visitors. With regard to the fact that
the impact of home landscape on the perception of environment is generally accepted,
the study of these cultural speci cs is a further possible  eld of any consecutive re-
search.
Acknowledgement
We thank Elizabeth George for language revision. We are also grateful to all who participated in this
research. Field survey and preparation of this paper was supported from the Czech Science Foundation
project GACR 403/09/P053.
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Submitted: 01/21/2011
Accepted: 04/04/2011
... demographic or cultural). Research should look at other criteria typical for tourism participants (purpose of travel, frequency of stay, structure of participant groups), such as satisfaction with products and perception (Navrátil et al., 2011) of the tourist area. A well-executed segmentation is the basis for developing an effective advertising strategy (Lacina, 2013, or Palatková, 2013, DMOs may be missing the mark because of no segmentation or wrong segmentation (Tkaczynski, & Rundle-Thiele, 2019). ...
... This implies that ambiance and environment it is not significant when it comes to profile. According to [19], the perception of the environment is one of the above-mentioned elements and, in tourism, represents one of the factors in building the destination image. Thus, perception of the environment could be understood as perception of quality because the place itself, or the scenery, is what visitors want to see, which is a common theme identified in landscape planning literature when discussing this issue. ...
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... The reason is obvious: such large areas are optimal places for relaxation away from city life. The main recreational strength for relaxation lies in the pleasant "natural" environment (Navratil et al., 2011). The large-area protected territories thus represent something usually called "naturebased tourism" (Lund, 2013;Pröbstl and Haider, 2013). ...
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