The effect of persuasive communication on rock climbers' environmental behavior

Sammanfattning: Rock climbing has become a popular adventure activity, yet it poses a threat to the environment, particularly to the rare species that inhabit the lower vegetation density of rock faces. To address this concern, effective evironmental communication is necessary to provoke environmentally responsible behavior among climbers. This study explores what the most effective form of environmental communication is, that elicits a positive response from rock climbers. Regulatory Focus Theory as well as the nature values distinction (intrinsic, instrumental, and relational) are employed to assess the effect of value-based messages on rock climbers' environmental behavior. Moreover, this research investigates how personal values of rock climbers (biospheric, altruistic, and egoistic) impact their response to messages that highlight different nature values. Environmental messaging that resonates with the personal values of rock climbers can influence their response positively. Thus, crafting messages that are aligned with the target audience's environmental dispositions is essential for effective environmental communication. While the findings did not yield definitive results, the study indicates that messages emphasizing the instrinsic value of nature coupled with prevention-oriented foucus may be more effective for rock climbers. Moreover, altruistic and biospheric values significantly moderated climbers' response to environmental messages framed with nature values. Regulatory focus was not found to significantly influence rock climbers' environmental behavior. The study also shows that demographic characteristics such as age and gender can influence the environmental behavior of rock climbers. The study's insights provide a baseline for future research in persuasive messaging for adventure tourists. The research opens up new directions in tourism studies and identifies environmental values most relevant to the rock climbing community, providing guidance to climbing area managers and other stakeholders invested in safeguarding natural habitats. By shedding light on possible environmental communication strategies for the promotion of pro-environmental behavior among rock climbers, this research offers an important contribution to the protection of vulnerable ecosystems and the preservation of natural habitats.