Influence of Environmental Factors in Determining Tourist Destinations

Tourism is a growing industry in many countries of the world and for many countries it is a potential source of economic growth and employment opportunities. Focusing on Sri Lanka in terms of tourism, tourism is the third largest foreign exchange earner in Sri Lanka. It is important to correctly identify the internal tourist destinations in Sri Lanka, as well as the environmental factors that influence those destinations' decisions, so that development projects can be made. Accordingly, through this study, the environmental factor has been studied in determining the tourist destinations. The three places chosen as the study area of this research are Sinharaja Rainforest in Kalawana Divisional Secretariat Division of Ratnapura District of Sri Lanka, Bopath Ella Waterfall located in Kuruvita Divisional Secretariat Division and Sitawaka Botanical Garden located in Seethawaka Divisional Secretariat Division of Colombo District. The judgment-based method was used to select the three tourist destinations. Also, 120 people were used as a sample for data collection. A simple random sampling method was used. Primary data and secondary data were used for this study. Participant observation, interview method and questionnaire method were used to collect primary data. IBM SPSS-26 version software was used for data analysis and a Binary Logistic model was used to identify how much influence the environmental factor has in determining tourist destinations. Accordingly, it was studied here whether the environmental factor affecting the decision of a tourist destination changes according to variables such as age, gender, marital Status, education level, occupation, income level etc. According to the results of the research, the Chi- square value is 56.435. The P value is statistically significant at the 1% level. That means the P value of the model is 0.000 (P<0.01). That means that the model is statistically significant. That is, according to the independent variables used above, it can be concluded that there is a change in the influence of the environmental factor to determine a tourist destination. In the analysis, the statistical significance of each independent variable was tested by the Wald test, which can identify the effect of each independent variable on the model. Accordingly, it was clear from this research that the variables of profession and education have a significant effect on the environmental factor that affects the decision of a tourist destination.  Keywords: Education, Environmental factor, Profession, Tourist destinations