Do Visitors’ Evaluations of Ecosystem Service Benefits Translate into Revisit and Recommendation Intentions? Conservation Awareness as a Mediator and Sex Differences Among Korean National Park Visitors
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: National parks conserve biodiversity while supplying the public with a broad range of ecosystem services, yet little is known about how visitors’ evaluations of these services relate to their attitudes and behavioral intentions. Using the Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) model as the organizing framework, with hypotheses motivated by Value–Belief–Norm (VBN) theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study examined how visitors’ satisfaction-based evaluations of provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting service benefits and visiting satisfaction are associated with revisit and recommendation intentions (RRIs) through conservation awareness, and whether these relationships differ between male and female visitors. An online survey of 1000 adults (aged 20–69) who had visited a Korean national park between May 2024 and June 2025 was conducted in July–August 2025 and analyzed using structural equation modeling, 5000-resample bootstrapped mediation tests, measurement invariance tests, and multi-group analysis, supplemented by robustness and common-method checks. Supporting services and visiting satisfaction were positively associated with conservation awareness, whereas visiting satisfaction and conservation awareness were positively associated with RRI. The direct association of cultural services with RRI was small and inconclusive, because its bootstrap confidence interval included zero. Significant indirect associations via conservation awareness were found for visiting satisfaction and supporting services. Of the eleven structural paths, only the satisfaction–RRI path differed significantly by sex (stronger among men) after correction for multiple testing. Because the data are cross-sectional and visiting satisfaction and RRI overlap empirically, the findings describe associations consistent with the proposed model rather than causal effects. They suggest that communicating the value of supporting services may be a useful focus for interpretation programs, a proposition that should be tested in intervention studies.
Source: Sustainability
DOI: 10.3390/su182211506
Authors: Jin Jang, Dong-Hoon Kim
Institution: Korea National Park Service
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,896
OpenAlex ID: W7225823949
FWCI:
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: