Tourist attitude and perception of bats
Our study demonstrates the potential of bat-watching ecotourism to improve public knowledge and conservation willingness of the public towards bats in the Philippines. The public perception of bats has an important impact on their conservation (Aziz et al. 2016). Bat watching was the primary motivation of tourists to visit MBCS, suggesting prior interest by visitors to bats. Contrary to our hypothesis, this study revealed that more tourists have positive perception towards bats than reported in many studies (Tanalgo et al. 2016; Musila et al. 2018). We found a more positive perception among highly educated respondents than those with basic education. This can be associated with their prior experience or higher access to knowledge from their educational experience or background giving them a higher level of understanding of the natural world (Lim and Wilson 2019). In the Philippines, Tanalgo et al. (2016) found that respondents with higher education had a lower willingness to participate in bat hunting activities or consumption bats for subsistence compared to those with lower education level. Public negative behaviour towards wildlife is driven by the greater likelihood of encounter and thus the possibility of negative experiences (Kellert et al. 1996; Kaltenborn 2007; Aziz et al. 2016; Tanalgo 2017). Similar findings by Tanalgo et al. (2016), showed that local communities living near caves with large colonies of bats had more negative perceptions towards bats than those living further away, and promote intentional culling because they believe that bats were responsible for destroying their fruit orchards. In Malaysia, local communities in Tioman Island tend to have a negative perception towards co-existing with Flying foxes because of their noise and destruction of fruit crops (Aziz et al. 2016). Similarly, in Australia, people tend to develop a negative perception of flying foxes after roosts move into residential communities in urban areas (Tait et al. 2014).
We found Filipino tourists were more familiar with Philippine bat species than foreign tourists. The support and involvement of locals are vital for effective conservation of wildlife populations and their habitats. Local citizens have more exposure to their local biodiversity and environment, and therefore develop a higher familiarity and understanding of it (Karanth and Nepal 2011; Souto and Tickin 2012; Theobald et al. 2015). Furthermore locals may have key roles in species conservation (Raymundo and Caballes 2016), but this may differ based on cultural values and experience (Tanalgo et al. 2016; Tanalgo 2017). However, our analysis shows that prior experience or exposure with bats was not directly associated with urban tourists’ conservation willingness, which mirrored to tourists’ general lack of experience with bats. People’s willingness to support species conservation depends on their knowledge about the importance of species which varies in social backgrounds (Lindemann-Matthies and Bose 2008). For example, urban dwellers have a lower understanding of wildlife than rural areas because they have less exposure to natural environments (Kato et al. 2019). In our present study, prior knowledge of ecosystem services was an important predictor of conservation willingness before and after bat-watching suggesting the importance of long-term knowledge. In addition to this, the perception of the conservation relevance of bat-watching to bats and caves as a conservation initiative was a strong predictor of conservation willingness among tourists (see Table 2 and Figure 2). This suggests that the public willingness to support bat management initiatives can be facilitated by wildlife tourism platforms to enable more effective conservation and management (Lundberg et al. 2019).
Conservation willingness differed by age and educational attainment. We found greater conservation willingness among tourists with higher education attainment. This is comparable to the findings of Musila et al. (2018) in Africa showing that older adults with higher educational attainment have a more positive perception and support for bat conservation. But in our study, younger (< 20 years old) urban tourists showed higher conservation willingness. One plausible reason that drives younger tourists’ association to conservation willingness was their access to environmental science education from secondary to tertiary education, which is included in the modern Philippine educational curriculum. Previous studies showed that younger respondents exposed to environment-related activities or education tend to have increased pro-environmental attitudes (Liefländer and Bogner 2014) and nature connectedness (Liefländer et al. 2013; Gräntzdörffer et al. 2019). This younger age group is ideal for spreading conservation awareness due to their proven higher influence in changing and improving adult behaviour towards environmental conservation (Damerell et al. 2013). Therefore, adapting bat-watching activities friendly for the younger audience could have positive effects and enhance their connectedness to “uncharismatic” species, thereby facilitating their conservation.
Our study showed that a large proportion of tourists were satisfied with bat-watching and learnt more about bats. In the post-visit survey, we noted that sampled tourists frequently showed higher support for bat conservation management and increased positive perception towards cave and bat conservation (see Figure 3b). Therefore, we suggest that integrative conservation education (e.g., detailing bat ecosystem services) and experience-based approaches such as bat cave watching, and tours could be useful to bolster human-bat relations (Trewhella et al. 2005; Musila et al. 2018).