The Environmental Conservation Consciousness of Visitors to Yakushima, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan

Ecotourism is lately subject of interest within the field of sustainable tourism. Especially travel to nature world heritage sites are getting more popular within this field. The object of study is Yakushima, the most developed place for ecotourism in Japan. The questionnaire based survey was undertaken in order to know the characteristics and environmental behavior of visitors and the features of environmental conservation consciousness of the visitors were examined. As a result 3 main point were clarified: 1）The interest of visitors to nature world heritage sites is high and most of them have positive image of nature heritage sites, the visitors were aware about world heritage conservation system. 2） The questions in the survey were related to usage of toilets in the territory of national park. The visitors think that nature of Yakushima should be cared, and knows about impact to environment of Yakushima, but questionnaire results showed negative responses for the different solutions of environmental impact issues. 3）The visitors are attracted by the nature of Yakushima as a matter of course. But if the condition of environment would change to worse in future, there is tendency that visitors who would choose Yakushima as travel spot will decrease. Yakushima got popular after it is declared as nature world heritage site, the people are attracted by it is wonderful nature. Of course, many visitors causing environmental issues but on the other side visitors are getting information about the environmental issues after their visitation to site. This paper provides environmental behavior of mostly younger generation visitors, so there is a need for further study on environmental consciousness of conservation activities which includes wider age range