FACTORS RELATED TO DISEASE PREVENTION BEHAVIOR AND HEALTH HAZARDS OF TOURISTS TRAVELING TO STAY AT KOH LIPE, KOH SARAI SUBDISTRICT, MUEANG DISTRICT, SATUN PROVINCE

Abstract

This research is an analytical cross-sectional study with the objective of studying disease prevention behavior and health hazards, the relationship between predisposing factors, enabling factors, reinforcing factors and health behavior of tourists.
The study sample consisted of 400 Thai tourists staying at Koh Lipe, Satun Province which was obtained from accidental sampling. The research tool used was a questionnaire developed from the Precede Model framework, consisting of predisposing factors, enabling factors, reinforcing factors and disease prevention behavior and health hazards.

The results of the research showed: 1) 70.5% of the tourists had appropriate disease prevention and health hazard behaviors every practice, especially self-protection behaviors whilst travelling on water, 69.5% of the tourists always wore a life jacket. 2)Predisposing factors: Knowledge about disease and health hazards, Attitudes about disease and health hazards, Perception of severity of disease and health hazards, Perceived risk of disease, Enabling factors: Access to travel medicine services, Access to laws related to disease prevention and health hazards, Reinforcing factors: Receiving advice from government officials, Receiving information has a relationship with disease prevention behavior and health hazards with statistical significance. (r= .22, .26, .19, .18, .20, .33, .33, .33 p<.001)
3) Predisposing factors, Enabling factors, and reinforcing factors can provide significant control of disease prevention and health hazard behaviors, with the statistical significance at p<0.05 with access to health regulations and information related to disease prevention and health hazards, tourists are 4.79 times as likely to engage in healthy behaviors.

According to the study findings, predisposing factors, enabling factors and reinforcing factors are related to the disease prevention behavior and health hazards of tourists traveling to stay at Koh Lipe. Related agencies such as Koh Lipe Subdistrict Health Promoting Hospital and Koh Lipe Subdistrict Municipality should support various factors to reach more tourists, e.g. creating documents, brochures or posters or providing knowledge in electronic media so that tourists can learn by themselves. Training should be organized regularly to provide knowledge to relevant officials such as ship crews to transfer knowledge on disease prevention and health hazards to tourists correctly and in time with the disease situation.