Behaviors and Amount of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Travel Routes of Tourists Staying at Environmentally Friendly Hotels: Case of Samui Island, Surat Thani Province, and Phuket Province

Abstract

The study aims to investigate behavior and factors affecting tourist pro-environmental behaviors staying at environmentally friendly hotels, to calculate greenhouse gas emissions occurred from travel routes, and to suggest guidelines of travel routes for tourists staying at the environmentally friendly hotel in Koh Samui, Surat Thani, and Phuket. Quantitative research with a questionnaire of 427 tourist sample groups, by quota and accidental sampling was conducted and data analysis with the SPSS software was employed. Calculating the carbon footprint of travel routes tourism in Phuket province in two cases: Case 1, the route starts from the origin (by passenger plane), and Case 2, the specific travel that starts from tourist routes in Phuket province, and carbon credits cost compare of the route in both cases.

The result of the highest tourist pro-environmental behavior was staying at environmentally friendly hotels, with an average score x̄ of 2.07 and most of the tourists was satisfied with the environmentally friendly hotels, with an average score x̄ of 2.22. The factors affecting environmentally friendly behavior include gender, age, education, length of stay, frequency of visits, and satisfaction, which were the statistically significant level of α = 0.01. The calculation of the carbon footprint of travel routes in Phuket province found that the carbon credit price for the route starts from the origin (by passenger plane) is 19.3 Baht in Case 1 with a higher cost of carbon footprint calculating than the specific travel that starts from tourist routes in Case 2 is 2.40 Baht because travel along Route 1 includes air travel, leading to increased greenhouse gas emissions.