An Analysis of Environmental Behaviors of Lake Zarivar Tourists (Marivan)

Development of tourism has many direct and indirect economical, social, cultural and environmental advantages for the host community and plays an important role in shaping the pattern of development; but on the other hand, such an approach rises some concerns about the threats facing the environment and natural, cultural and historical heritage of local residents on the part of tourists. That’s why today sustainable tourism is regarded as a new concept to deal with the negative effects of tourism development in the context of sustainable development programs in order to protect the environment of touristic areas. Due to the severe impact of behavior of tourists on the environment, this study attempts to investigate the effect of subjective-attitudinal and demographic variables in explaining environmental behaviors of tourists. For this purpose, 230 questionnaires were distributed randomly among the tourists visiting Zarivar Lake in Marivan from which 200 questionnaires were collected and analyzed. The results indicated that there is no significant relationship between gender, age and length of stay on one hand and environmental behavior of tourists on the other. The results also showed a significant relationship between the level of education, the means of travel and type of accommodation on the environmental behavior of visitors. Moreover, stepwise regression analysis revealed that environmental concerns and education have the most impact on the dependent variable. In other words, higher education level and higher environmental concerns of tourists causes more environment-friendly behaviors in them.