The Relationship Between Turkish Backpackers’ Personel Development And Sustainability Perceptions

Today, it is assumed that independent travels, which are especially popular among young people, make a significant contribution to personal development. However, in many studies it has been found that backpackers are not much concerned about sustainability. Therefore, the relationship between the travelers' perceptions of sustainability and these travels, which are supposed to be beneficial to personal development, have been examined. A quantitative design was adopted in the research and a survey technique was used. A total of 244 Turkish backpackers were reached face-to-face and online with snowball sampling method. Data collected in September-October 2018 were subjected to correlation analysis. As a results of the research, significant relationships were found between all personal development dimensions and perceptions of sustainability of travelers. It has been determined that the dimension of awareness and capability is mostly related to social sustainability, skill dimension is related to environmental sustainability and emotion dimension is related to economic sustainability