Abstract

Anumber of studies suggest that tourists in general are aware of environmental and social problems caused by tourism and that they have positive attitudes towards efforts to reduce them. The general objective of this study is therefore to investigate tourists' environmental beliefs and tourists' environmental behaviour while on a trip and relationship between these two variables. In order to investigate tourists' environmental beliefs and behaviour, quantitative data was collected through a means of a self-administered questionnaire using a likert scale of five (5). The sampling frame in this study consisted of tourists who visited Afan National festival in January 2015 for leisure and recreational purposes, stayed overnight and were 18 years of age or older. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of 55 tourists approached on a random basis in a close vicinity of Afan National festival. In total, 52 usable questionnaires were collected. The result shows that respondents between the ages 30-39 made up 9.6%, which was the second lowest group to participate. Finally, those 70 and above made up 3.8% of the sample. The most common income bracket for respondents (34.6%) was over N200, 000.00. The second most common (17.3%), were those who made N100,000 – N50,000 followed by 15.4% of respondents who made N50,000- N10,000. It also showed that 41.7% of the participants had low environmental beliefs score and 66.7% of participants had low environmental behaviour score. It also revealed that tourists have a responsibility to do what they can to protect the environment with mean of 4.10, standard deviation of 1.100, representing 82.3% of respondents. The study concludes that the overall environmental beliefs results showed that majority of participants had positive environmental beliefs. For every statement asked, majority of responses were proenvironmental and showed that participants had concern for the environment. The strongest belief held by participants was the belief stating that the present generation should ensure the environment is maintained or enhanced for the benefit of future generations, as over half of the participants strongly agreed with this.