Environmental Awareness of Visitors to Erawan National Park, Kanchanaburi Province

Abstract

     To achieve visitor impact management, a park manager has to understand the environmental awareness of visitors as this can influence their behavior to be environmentally friendly. The objectives of this research were to investigate the levels of environmental awareness of visitors, to analyze factors influencing their awareness, and to analyze the influence of environmental awareness on environmental behavior. Erawan National Park was selected as the study site. The study was based on questionnaire interviews conducted from October 2013 to January 2014, with 416 domestic visitors. The results showed that the majority of visitors were anthropocentrists and expressed a high degree of environmental awareness. The positive way that visitors most frequently behaved was by separating waste before disposal while negative behavior was bringing foam containers into Erawan National Park. The results of the ordinal regression analyses indicated that environmental knowledge and attitude toward the environment significantly influenced the environmental awareness of visitors. Consequently, environmental awareness significantly influenced the environmental behavior of visitors. Thus, environmentally friendly behavior should be encouraged by building up the environmental awareness of visitors.