Environmental Sensibility and Human Values as Factors for Forming European Ecotourist Market Segments

This study examines the relationship between environmental attitudes and human value sets in forming an eco-tourist market segment within the European region. Different studies indicated that environmental attitudes reflected in general motivations were closely and positively related. Some findings showed that the examination of environmental attitudes that concern psychological factors (motivation) could be more powerful and meaningful than socio-demographic characteristics. The purpose of this study is to examine if human values that indicate basic motivational aspects, when inter-related with high environmental sensibility shared by different people from Europe, could be used for the creation of a specific market segmentation model. The findings identified three main factors that determine tourist values, while at the same time, the multiple discriminant analysis indicated the existence of several clusters, allowing for an identification of ‘eco-friendly’ tourist segments. By using data collections from the European Social Survey, the model also allowed comparability between surveyed countries by crosschecking multiple psycho-sociological and demographic factors, focusing on the environmentally sensitive groups, the so-called ‘eco-careful’ (hard) and ‘eco-sensible’ (soft) tourists. Furthermore, the study looked at potential demand markets that are interested in preserved nature, recreation, and adventure tours. The study confirmed that basic human values play an important role in explaining motivation aspects in tourism-related choices