Environmental Sensibility and Human
Values as Factors for Forming European
Ecotourist Market Segments
Aleksandra Terzi´ c and Dunja Demirovi´ c Bajrami
1 Introduction
The motivation and personal preferences are becoming the main delimiting factors
of tourist destination choices, as well as holiday types in the contemporary world.
By offering a great variety of tourist destinations and activities, and allowing relatively high levels of individuality and independence in travel organizations, special
interest tourism was developed as a concept to oppose the mass-tourism in the
twenty-first century, being considered a ‘more sustainable form’ of tourism. Tourism
consumption patterns and the growth of ‘special interest tourism’ were reflected in
the continuous growth of leisure interests diversity of the late-modern leisure society
(Trauer 2006; Šteti´ c et al. 2019), being an answer to contemporary tourists’ needs
for emotional or psychological stimulation, seeking tailor-made experiences. Human
needs related to escape and personal enhancements were considered to be the basic
motivation for travel and can be found in personal value sets of each traveller. With the
appearance of the concept of eco-tourism (in the 1970s) as environmentally friendly
or sustainable tourism, it is defined as being a ‘nature-based form of alternative
tourism that embodies the virtuous traits that mass tourism supposedly lacks’, but
recently, due to extreme expansion in numbers, it can also be conceived as a form of
environmentally aware ‘mass tourism’ (Weaver 2001, p. 104).
Ecotourism has been developed as ‘a conspicuous form of life politics’, while
growth in demand for ecotourism reflects a certain sensibility among tourists and
A. Terzi´ c (B) · D. Demirovi´ c Bajrami
Geographical Institute “Jovan Cviji´ c” Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade, Serbia
e-mail: a.terzic@gi.sanu.ac.rs
D. Demirovi´ c Bajrami
e-mail: d.demirovic@gi.sanu.ac.rs
D. Demirovi´ c Bajrami
Department of Tourism and Socio-Cultural Service, Institute of Sports, Tourism and Service,
South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Lubowiecki-Vikuk et al. (eds.), Handbook of Sustainable Development and Leisure
Services, World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59820-4_16
241
Values as Factors for Forming European
Ecotourist Market Segments
Aleksandra Terzi´ c and Dunja Demirovi´ c Bajrami
1 Introduction
The motivation and personal preferences are becoming the main delimiting factors
of tourist destination choices, as well as holiday types in the contemporary world.
By offering a great variety of tourist destinations and activities, and allowing relatively high levels of individuality and independence in travel organizations, special
interest tourism was developed as a concept to oppose the mass-tourism in the
twenty-first century, being considered a ‘more sustainable form’ of tourism. Tourism
consumption patterns and the growth of ‘special interest tourism’ were reflected in
the continuous growth of leisure interests diversity of the late-modern leisure society
(Trauer 2006; Šteti´ c et al. 2019), being an answer to contemporary tourists’ needs
for emotional or psychological stimulation, seeking tailor-made experiences. Human
needs related to escape and personal enhancements were considered to be the basic
motivation for travel and can be found in personal value sets of each traveller. With the
appearance of the concept of eco-tourism (in the 1970s) as environmentally friendly
or sustainable tourism, it is defined as being a ‘nature-based form of alternative
tourism that embodies the virtuous traits that mass tourism supposedly lacks’, but
recently, due to extreme expansion in numbers, it can also be conceived as a form of
environmentally aware ‘mass tourism’ (Weaver 2001, p. 104).
Ecotourism has been developed as ‘a conspicuous form of life politics’, while
growth in demand for ecotourism reflects a certain sensibility among tourists and
A. Terzi´ c (B) · D. Demirovi´ c Bajrami
Geographical Institute “Jovan Cviji´ c” Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade, Serbia
e-mail: a.terzic@gi.sanu.ac.rs
D. Demirovi´ c Bajrami
e-mail: d.demirovic@gi.sanu.ac.rs
D. Demirovi´ c Bajrami
Department of Tourism and Socio-Cultural Service, Institute of Sports, Tourism and Service,
South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Lubowiecki-Vikuk et al. (eds.), Handbook of Sustainable Development and Leisure
Services, World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59820-4_16
241