Factor analyses initially revealed four factors with an eigenvalue
greater than 1. However, extraction communalities for five of the
items were less than .28 and these were therefore excluded from
the second analysis. A new factor analysis with 13 items was conducted
to fine-tune these categorisations, thereby exhibiting the
best structure. This resulted in a new four factor solution, which
accounted for 53.85% of the variance, with all four factors having
acceptable Cronbach’s alphas that ranged between .70 and .84
(Table 3). These factors (key experience attributes) were named:
Risk/challenge, Facilitation, Learning, and Family/children friendly.
These four key experience attributes, we argue, correspond well to
earlier studies showing that elements of learning, recreation, and
adventure usually are included in nature based tourism products
(Laarman & Durst, 1987; Laarman & Gregersen, 1996; Wurzinger &
Johansson, 2006).
The first key experience attribute identified was Risk/challenge
and it accounted for 20.66% of the total variance; with a reliability
coefficient of .84 (Table 3). This key experience attribute incorporated
six items. Facilitation, the second key experience attribute,
accounted for 11.55% of the variance, with a reliability coefficient of
.70 and incorporated three items. Learning, the third attribute,
accounted for 11.40% of the variance, with a reliability coefficient of
.78. The final attribute, termed Family/children friendly, accounted
for 10.25% of the variance, with a reliability coefficient of .78. Both
the second and the third key experience attributes incorporated
two items each.
The most important experience attribute connected to the
consumption of nature based tourism activity products reviewed in
this study was that of Facilitation which had a mean value score of
4.12, followed by Learning, which had a mean score of 3.91 (Table 3).
Table 4 shows an overviewof the mean scores of the key experience
attributes for the 25 commercial activities listed in the survey.
Facilitation (with the mean ranging from 3.34 to 4.66) and Learning
(with the mean ranging from 3.80 to 4.71) were the two most
important key experience attributes for all the activities listed.
These high mean scores indicated that Facilitation and Learning are
central to the way in which the sample population experiences
nature based tourism activity products.
The two remaining key experience attributes we identified in
this study appeared to be of less overall importance for the sample
(both had a mean score value below 3 e i.e. a neutral value). These
were the Family/children-friendly experience attribute which had
a mean score of 2.89, and the Risk/challenge experience attribute
which had a mean score of 2.85. Between the 25 activities in this
study, larger differences in the mean score for the Family/children friendly attribute (with the mean ranging from 2.09 to 3.79) and the
Risk/challenge experience attribute (with the mean ranging from
2.46 to 3.86) were identified. Some activities had a high mean score
for the Family/children-friendly experience attribute such as horse
riding (3.79), arranged sea fishing (3.63), safari (3.50) and wilderness
camp (3.47). Unsurprisingly, the Risk/challenge experience
attribute was associated with activities such as via ferrata (3.86),
rafting (3.76), kiting/surfing (3.76) and climbing (3.73).
The low variation between the 25 activities and the mean scores
on the Facilitation and the Learning experience, we suggest, indicates
that these experience attributes are not directly connected to
the activities themselves, but more to the context in which they are
performed. While, the larger variation between the 25 activities
and mean scores on the Family/children-friendly and the Risk/challenge
experience attributes may indicate that these experience
attributes are less connected to the commercial element of the
activity, but more to the activity itself. Activities such as rafting and
climbing, for example, will have a tendency to be experienced as
risky and challenging, regardless of the context they are preformed
within.We argue therefore that experience attributes connected to
nature based tourism activity products can be categorised as either
supplementary or inherent. Supplementary experience attributes, we
suggest, are those that are added to an activity through the commercialisation
of an activity into a tourism product. In contrast,
inherent experiences attributes are those that are implicitly connected
to the activity itself and are independent of the context in
which the activities are undertaken. In this study we have identified
two supplementary experience attributes; Facilitation and
Learning, and two inherent experiences attributes; Family/childrenfriendly
and Risk/challenge.