Özet:

It is remarkable in terms of tourism that people's interest in natural areas is increasing day by day and the nature-based tourism sector is growing rapidly within the tourism industry. The demographic and travel characteristics, travel motivations and generally tourist profiles of nature tourists who make travel plans for natural areas differ according to other tourist characteristics. In this study, it is aimed to determine the travel motivations and tourist profiles of the tourists living in Izmir and traveling within the scope of nature-based tourism activities. Quantitative research method was used in the study and a questionnaire was applied to 357 people participating in nature tourism activities. The obtained data were analysed using the R-Project program and the SPSS-26 package program. In the analysis process, in addition to descriptive statistics, Cronbach Alpha reliability analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), Mann Whitney-U and Kruskall Wallis-H tests were used for non-parametric tests since the scale did not show normal distribution. As a result of the analysis, demographic variables (such as age, gender, education, income status) and sub-dimensions of the scale (motivation, preference of areas that come to the fore in terms of natural environment features, nature-based tourism activity preferences) has been determined that there are some significant differences between the factors that are effective in choosing the destination.

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