Abstract:

Tourism contributes to the growth of economy of a nation through employment, multiplier effect, and foreign exchange earnings and also contributes to positive balance of payments. Ecotourism is the natural evolution of tourism employing care for the environment, culture and local traditions, while promoting environmental education. Eco-tourists behavior are still areas of opportunity for research in order to understand the factors, whether economic, cultural, social, demographic, or psychographic, that determine this behavior. The Corona Virus (COVID-19) pandemic situation has posed significant effect on tourism industry. The COVID-19 lockdown around the world has imposed negative impact on world economy as well. This research aimed at understanding the determiners in the process of consumer intention in ecotourism contexts, as well as verifying the growing importance of ecotourism. This comparative research is to analyze the intention to practice ecotourism among eco-tourists from two countries by comparing eco-tourists from Malaysia and Indonesia, in which the importance of ecotourism is similar. The construct variables toward to do ecotourism are awareness of consequences, personal norms and social norms with covid 19 as moderator. The data were obtained from questionnaire distribution to 100 Malaysian and 100 Indonesian eco tourists respondents using five likert scale and analyzed through smart PLS 3. The hypotheses were to indicate the intention to practice ecotourism which influenced by awareness of consequences, personal norms, and social norms. The result indicates a significant and positive relationship between Covid-19 and Intention to do Ecotourism. Personal Norms and Social Norms have significant positive relationship with Intention to do Ecotourism, respectively. However, there is no moderation effect of Covid – 19 on Intention to do Ecotourism.

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