Factors Influencing the Intention to Adopt a Pro-Environmental Behavior by Tourist Operators of a Mexican National Marine Park

Tourist operators can contribute to the conservation of the environment in marine protected areas by sharing messages with visitors about their expected behaviour and the possible impacts of their actions. However, generally speaking this was done by demonstrating pro-environmental actions. Despite the importance of pro-environmental behavior, there are few studies explaining how this behavior is formed in tourist operators. The present study investigates the factors that influence the willful intention of tourist operators of a national park in Mexico to behave more pro-environmentally. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was applied to test whether attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control predicted the pro-environmental behavioral intent of tourist operators. Quantitative data were collected among 165 tourist operators and analyzed by Structural Equation Mod¬eling (SEM). The findings revealed that the most important variable influencing tourist operators’ intention is perceived behavioral control, followed by subjective norms. Unexpectedly, attitudes were not significantly associated with tourist operators’ inten¬tions. Based on the results, strategies are presented in here to promote a change in the intention of tourist operators.