Environmental Perception and Sense of Responsibility of the Tourism Industry in Mainland China, Taiwan and Japan

This paper attempts to elicit the underlying reasons why and how people within the tourism industry perceive the natural environment and how they regard their own responsibility for environmental management. As East Asian culture is believed to have different attitudes and values towards the natural environment and resources when compared to Western culture, it is hypothesised that there will be a corresponding difference in how they view the relationship between nature and tourism. Although this is not an East–West comparative study, it nevertheless aims to discern if there is any structural variation in perception within East Asian countries. To this end, a questionnaire was conducted in Mainland China, Taiwan and Japan in 1994 and the data were analysed by Multidimensional Scaling (MDS). The analysis shows that authoritarianism and an anthropocentric market approach to the natural environment and resources affect the perception of tourism activities across cultures. Minor cultural differences were found in the perceptual construct of nature and tourist activities.