Determining the influences of eco-friendly tourists behaviour toward indigenous culture and environment in the Development of Eco-tourism in Bhutan

The tourism sector in Bhutan faces many challenges due to the need to increase tourism income that supports economic growth, employment, which augments government revenues to fund infrastructure development and raise living standards. While it is undeniable that tourism’s economic contribution is significant towards the development of other sectors in the economy, without proper tourism planning it can also create detrimental environmental effects such as natural degradation. Bhutan’s current tourism policy is designed to control the type and amount of tourism inflows to minimise its impact on indigenous culture, traditions, religion, and the natural environment. Thus far, this policy has been effective in restraining negative environmental and cultural impacts from tourism by restricting tourism numbers, but the continuing pressures of high unemployment and slow economic growth warrants an examination of how this policy can be improved to better balance the dual threats and benefits of tourism for Bhutan. In recent years, the discourse in tourism research has focussed on eco-tourism and sustainability as a viable strategy to balance the costs and benefits of tourism development. An important theme relevant to this research is the concept of “eco-friendliness” referring to the use of products, practices, and services in tourism that are environmentally friendly and sustainable, without reducing the economic benefits. However, the research literature has been concerned mainly towards tourism supply-side issues regarding the degree and types of eco friendliness of products and services offered to tourists. Tourism policymakers’ goals to attract high value environmentally responsible tourism in Bhutan, highlights the significance of planning appropriate critical demand-side aspects, such as attracting and managing tourists’ expectations, values of eco-friendliness and culturally respectful behaviours. The tourism strategic intend to devise effective strategies to attract, encourage, and support eco-friendly tourism behaviours is of paramount importance. The ecotourism literature suggests that environmental awareness is not a strong predictor of eco-friendly product purchases. However, ecotourists values, resources and prior responsible behaviours towards purchasing eco-friendly products appear to be stronger predictors of future behaviour and purchases. The purpose of this research is to empirically determine the salient motivating and predictor factors influencing eco-friendly behaviour and environmentally sustainable purchases. Identifying the tourists’ key traits and values related to choosing responsible tourism products is a core demand characteristic to ascertain in this research. The research findings regarding ecotourism demand characteristics are more reliable to develop innovative communication strategies. Investigating the ecotourism demand-side characteristics addresses some of the gaps in the extent literature and making an original contribution towards managing ecotourism in Bhutan effectively. The theoretical perspectives applied in this research are: self-congruity theory (SCT), self-expansion theory (SET) and norm activation theory (NAT). These constructs will be used to develop a new set of hypotheses and a theoretical model to be tested empirically. These theoretical perspectives are related to relevant tourism behavioural constructs such as nature[1]seeking behaviour, green empowerment and environmental advocacy. The study will utilize a sequential mixed methods research design consisting of two phases. The first phase is the collection and analysis of qualitative data to direct model building, and the second phase will test empirically the model with quantitative survey data. Qualitative techniques include semi structured face-to-face interviews with community leaders and tourism agents in Bhutan, which will be analysed using NVivo for emergent themes. Data for the quantitative phase will utilise survey methodology administered via local government offices across several regions to representatively capture differences in cultural and environmental tourism product aspects to allow comparisons between different settings. The findings of this research will provide valid and reliable recommendations for policymakers to strengthen the overall efficacy of Bhutan’s tourism policies aiming to fine tune best tourism practice and safeguard the preservation of Bhutan’s natural assets. The research aims to make significant theoretical contributions including the use of SCT, SET and NAT perspectives that expand the current knowledge and discourse in the literature toward demand-side constructs.