Analysis of Factors Influencing Loyalty to Green Destinations; A Case Study of Andebil Tourism Region in Khalkhal County

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Iranian Studies, Faculty of Iranian Studies, Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan, Rafsanjan, Iran

2 Assistant Professor, Geography Department, Faculty of Geography, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran

3 Tourism expert and CEO of Anam Khalkhal Tourism Company, Khalkhal, Iran

Abstract

Introduction:
Ecotourism is an activity that takes place in natural and pristine destinations and one of its important goals is to gain knowledge about natural life, enjoy local cultures, and of course preserve the quality of natural environments. This area has gained some importance and due to its role in sustainable development, the United Nations named 2002 as the year of ecotourism. One of the ecotourism destinations of Khalkhal county is Andabil resort. This resort is one of the pristine and scenic areas of this city, which is located near Khalkhal. This resort has trees such as oaks and has been attracting the attention of local people and tourists since the early 80s with the road construction done by the relevant bodies. From the point of view of tourists, effective key components play a role in ecotourism destinations, among which we can mention the perceived value, appropriate experience, attachment to the destination and memory of the destination. In consumer behavior, loyalty is considered the concept of commitment to a specific product. Therefore, it can be said that in the field of tourism, tourist loyalty to a destination means the tourist's commitment to a specific destination. Therefore, the purpose of the current research is to explain the role of these factors in the loyalty of tourists to this ecotourism destination.
materials and methods:
This article is a descriptive-analytical article that is included in applied research. This research, from the point of view of philosophy, is among positivist research. The research strategy is survey research and the research method is quantitative. The statistical population is tourists who have visited Andabil resort. 300 questionnaires were completed electronically. The research questionnaire includes various items, including perceived value (3 questions), experience (4 questions), destination attachment (4 questions), destination loyalty (3 questions) and destination memory (3 questions). The tool used for data analysis is Smart-PLS structural equation software. Andabil resort, which is known as Mir Adel Balaghi among local people, is located in the east of Khalkhal city. Its distance from Khalkhal center is five kilometers. This resort is surrounded by different Talash mountains and therefore has given it a special visual appeal. It has given historical and cultural value due to the existence of some historical monuments such as the foundation of the castle and the fire temple (Jafarnejhad, 2016: 140). This area is popular with many tourists in spring and summer. Local people use it as a natural ski resort in winter and in case of favorable snowfall.
Findings:
The results show that the questionnaire questions have factor loadings with high scores. Another result presented in this table is reliability, convergent validity and divergent validity. Cronbach's alpha and combined reliability were used to evaluate the reliability, because the values of these two indicators are greater than 0.7, and therefore the reliability of the research tool is confirmed. The average variance extracted was used to check the convergent validity and because the results are greater than 0.5, therefore the convergent validity is confirmed. This study used Forner and Larcker's ratio to check divergent validity. Divergent validity is also used to ensure the absence of collinearity issues. In this method, it is necessary that the values on the main diameter of the matrix are greater than all the values in its corresponding column, and the results of the research show that such an issue has been achieved in the current research. According to the results, the divergent validity has been confirmed and the structures have the feature of non-collinearity. According to the results obtained in the field of research hypotheses, the results have been obtained as follows. The perceived value and its effect on the memory of the destination were confirmed so that its path coefficient is 0.562 and its significance is 6.45. On the other hand, the hypothesis of the effect of perceived value on destination attachment was rejected with a path coefficient of 0.071 and a significance of 0.636. The hypothesis of the effect of experience on attachment to the destination was confirmed because the value of the path coefficient is 0.699 and the significance is 7.10. Two other hypotheses of the research, i.e., the effect of attachment to the destination on loyalty and the hypothesis of memory of the destination on loyalty, respectively, were confirmed with different coefficients. According to the results of the research, the coefficient of determination or (R2) which determines the degree of predicting the changes of the dependent variable by means of the independent variable(s); It can be seen that the coefficient of memory of the destination is 0.315%, attachment to the destination is 0.568 and loyalty is 0.658. Except for the memory of the destination, which has obtained an average coefficient, two other dependent variables have a high predictive power. Finally, the Q2 values, which represent an evaluation criterion for the cross-validity prediction relationship of the PLS path model. In fact, this criterion shows the quality of the prediction of the dependent variables; Based on the results, the value of Q2 for the memory of the destination is 0.230, which is the lowest value among the dependent variables. Also, attachment to the destination with a coefficient of 0.369 and loyalty with a coefficient of 0.405 obtained a higher coefficient than the memory of the destination.
 
Discussion and conclusion:
The results of this research show that there is no significant relationship between the perceived value and attachment to the destination, which is inconsistent with the results of some researches such as the research of Ahn and Kwon (2020) and Faridi Foshtomi et al. (2019). In their research, these two researchers concluded that the perceived value of green hotels had a positive effect on repeat visits. In explaining this issue, it should be mentioned that unfortunately, because this area is pristine and natural, not many services are provided by the local people, even the previous investments in this area have damaged the visual quality of this resort. The interesting thing is that there is not even a toilet and basic services in this resort. The results of this research showed that the tourist experience has a positive and significant effect on attachment to the destination, which is in line with Cifci's research (2021). In this regard, it should be said that the tourist experience in this area is the result of the high quality of this resort. So that according to field studies, many tourists who traveled to this region from hot and dry regions have mentioned this region with surprise. The presence of fog has been interesting and surprising for the tourists who traveled to this region from the scorching heat of the southern regions.

Keywords

References

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Green Development Management Studies
Volume 3, Issue 2 - Serial Number 6
October 2024
Pages 58-72

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