Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY-COGRAFYA DERGISI, sa.45, ss.47-67, 2022 (ESCI)
The daily increase in people's interest in natural areas and the rapid growth of the nature-based tourism sector within the tourism industry are remarkable in terms of tourism. The demographic and travel characteristics, travel motivations, and general tourist profiles of nature tourists who make travel plans to natural areas differ according to other tourists' characteristics. This study aims to determine the travel motivations and tourist profiles of tourists living in Izmir traveling within the scope of nature-based tourism activities. The study uses the quantitative research method and applies a nature tourism scale to 357 people participating in nature tourism activities. The obtained data have been analyzed using the program R-Project and the package program SPSS-26. The analyses used the Cronbach's alpha reliability analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and Mann Whitney-U and Kruskall Wallis-H tests for non -parametric tests in addition to descriptive statistics due to the scale not showing normal distribution. As a result of the analyses, demographic variables (i.e., age, gender, education, income status) and the scale's sub-dimensions (i.e., motivation, preference of areas that come to the fore in terms of natural environment features, nature-based tourism activity preferences) were determined to have reveal significant differences between the factors that are effective in choosing the destination.