Special aspects of environmentally responsible behavior of tourists in protected areas

Specially protected areas are a form of solving two essentially contradictory, but equallyurgent tasks: preserving pristine form of nature and ensuring an affordable recreation forpopulation widely using the natural resources. Besides that, according to the sustainable tourismprinciples, protected areas should also contribute to the economy development of the territories,where they are located. Today the state’s Government and the tourists industry’s leaders posethe objective of priority development of ecotourism, meaning the tourism within the protectedareas, utilizing the richest potential of the country.It is necessary to solve it taking into account the experience accumulated both in our country andin world practice in conquering the indicated contradiction, based on the modern knowledge aboutdevelopment of the tourism industry’s trends and consumers’ behavior.The article analyses featuresof tourists’ ecologically responsible behavior as one of the main instrument for mitigation ofthe negative consequences for natural destinations caused by extensive tourism, justifies theimportance of the tourists’ responsible behavior for the protected area ecosystemspreservation, characterizes the tourists’ ecologically responsible behavior within the protectedarea on the ground of the survey’s data, obtained by the Caucasian Biosphere Reserve,formulates an objective of quantity assessment the proportion of tourists practicingenvironmentally responsible behavior in the ecotourism segment, proves the author'salgorithm for identifying and evaluating the proportion of environmentally responsible touristsbased on a sociological survey and establishes, that 26% of the of the reserve’s route visitorspractice environmentally responsible behavior during the hike.The obtained value is comparable to the proportion of consumers, which can be attributed tosocially and environmentally responsible ones, determined as a result of other studies.