Knowledge and attitudes on ecotourism of college students at Central Philippine University

Abstract

This study on the knowledge and attitude about ecotourism of college students was done in Central Philippine University. A one shot survey was conducted using researcher-prepared questionnaire which were administered to third and fourth year students. The total population was three hundred thirty nine. Data were encoded and analyzed using SPSS and statistical tools used were frequency, percentage, Kruskal-Wallis and Pearson’s r. The level of significance for hypotheses testing was .05.

The findings of the study showed that majority of the respondents were from the College of Nursing and were female. Majority of the students had average level of knowledge about ecotourism and were knowledgeable particularly about the environmental impacts of ecotourism in an area. They had very little knowledge, however about its effects on the local community. Less than half of the respondents knew that ecotourism involves availing of local services such as tour guiding and meal preparation, while majority of them were knowledgeable that going on an ecotour consisted of learning about the plants and animals in the area while continuously observing environment-friendly practices. When grouped according to college, most of the students in every college had an average knowledge about ecotourism. The most number of students with low level knowledge about ecotourism were from the College of Arts & Sciences.

Majority of the students had favorable attitude towards ecotourism. Students from the College of Nursing had the highest number of respondents with an uncertain attitude towards ecotourism. The same college also had the least number of respondents with favorable attitude towards ecotourism. It is recommended that the students in the College of Nursing be given opportunities to learn about ecotourism through ecotours since this type of tourism benefits the environment and eventually human life. Significant but weak relationship was found between the students’ attitude towards ecotourism and their level of knowledge about ecotourism. This means that the more knowledgeable the students are about ecotourism, the more favorable their attitude becomes towards ecotourism. But since it is a weak relationship, there are still other factors that influence their attitude towards ecotourism. The researcher encourages additional studies to look into this so as to be able to specifically pinpoint these factors.