Exploring Cross-cultural Differences in Attitudes towards Responsible Tourist Behaviour: A Comparison of Korean, British and Australian Tourists

Culture is an important dimension of tourism, both as an attraction for visitors and as a characteristic that influences visitor behaviour and interaction with destination residents and tourism staff. In recognition of this importance, there has been a steady increase in the number of studies examining cross-cultural differences in various aspects of tourism. The environment is also an important dimension of tourism, and discussions of sustainability and the management of the environmental impacts of tourism are very common in the literature, especially in publications on eco-tourism. This paper will bring together these two core dimensions of culture and environment in an analysis of cross-cultural differences in tourist attitudes towards eco-tourism. More specifically, the paper reports on a study comparing the responses of Korean, Australian and British tourists with a set of 14 statements designed to measure attitudes towards responsible tourist behaviours. The results indicated that, while age and gender were variables that influenced some tourist attitudes, there were also significant differences between the three national cultural groups on most of the attitude statements. In addition, a series of factor analyses indicated that the different national cultural groups organized their perceptions of responsible tourist behaviour in very different ways. Implications of these results for the provision of eco-tourism products and for enhancing sustainable tourism are discussed.