Environmental orientation and ecotourism awareness among pilgrims, adventure tourists, and leisure tourists

For the sustainable development of tourism in destination areas, it is important to have responsible visitors with high pro-environmental orientation and a critical minimum knowledge of ecotourism. Most of the pilgrimage, adventurous, and leisure destinations of India are in ecologically sensitive locations with bountiful environmental resources. Thus, understanding tourists’ environmental orientation is critical for destination management. In this context, the present study investigates the environmental orientation and ecotourism awareness of tourists visiting some of the key environmental hotspots of northern India. A comparative analysis of the environmental orientations of pilgrims, adventurists, and leisure tourists is also carried out. The findings generally reveal that there exist significant differences among these categories in terms of environmental orientation and awareness about ecotourism. Pilgrims and adventurists exhibit superior environmental orientation compared to leisure tourists. Yet, when it comes to the awareness of ecotourism, none of the groups under study show great awareness, except that adventurists stand better compared to the other two groups