Affiliation:
1. Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovića 3, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia
Abstract
Geotourism is a rapidly growing market for tourism, and has gained huge popularity worldwide. Zaječar district is located in Eastern Serbia, and this area is famous for many attractive geotourism features that seek to be presented to the global tourism market. This article aims to present geotourist typology models based on their motivation and travel behaviour. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 194 respondents who visited the geosites of Zaječar district or have the intention to visit them. The data was processed by an exploratory factor analysis, one-way ANOVA, the t-test for independent samples, and multiple regression analyses for in-depth investigations and statistical validation of the findings. The results present three typology models of geotourists based on their motivation to visit geosites (health and relaxation, education and curiosity, socialisation), and three typology models of geotourists based on their travel behaviour (active behaviour, passive behaviour, individual behaviour). The analysis also revealed that motives significantly predict tourist behaviour. Also, this study shows that respondents (tourists) have a positive attitude towards local communities, and emphasise their importance for geotourism development. These findings could be helpful for policy managers and all other interested parties to create strategies and tourism products according to the needs of the potential geotourism market.
Funder
Provincial Secretariat for Higher Education and Scientific Research of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Republic of Serbia
Subject
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law,Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment,Geography, Planning and Development,Building and Construction
Reference60 articles.
1. The performance and potential of protected areas;Watson;Nature,2014
2. Herrera-Franco, G., Montalván-Burbano, N., Carrión-Mero, P., Apolo-Masache, B., and Jaya-Montalvo, M. (2020). Research trends in ge-otourism: A bibliometric analysis using the Scopus Database. Geosciences, 10.
3. Dowling, R.K., and Newsome, D. (2006). The Scope and Nature of Geotourism, Geotourism—Sustainbility, Impacts and Managements, Butterworth-Heinemann.
4. Place Attachment and Tourist Experience in the Context of Desert Tourism—The Case of Wadi Rum;Allan;Czech J. Tour.,2016
5. An Exploratory Study to Develop a Geotourism Typology Model;Hurtado;Int. J. Tour. Res.,2014