SERVICE QUALITY MEASUREMENT IN NATIONAL PARKS IN THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA: APPLICATION OF MODIFIED ECOSERV MODEL

Furthermore, no comprehensive empirical measurements of service quality in all eight national parks of the Republic of Croatia have so far been carried out. Since service quality plays a significant role in further developing ecotourism, this research gap can be considered a problem. The role and importance of service quality in general, as well as in ecotourism, is stressed, and in this context, the specific features of ecotourism services with an emphasis on the sustainability element are presented. Since the concept of service quality represents one of the main interests of this thesis, a further review of models that conceptualise service quality is provided, with special focus on SERVQUAL and ECOSERV models. [...]the results obtained from the multivariate regression analysis suggest that the dimensions of service quality have an effect on the overall service quality, destination image and future behavioural intentions, although the statistical significance and size of the effects vary across the dimensions. [...]the thesis makes a conceptual contribution by developing a modified ECOSERV model for measuring service quality in ecotourism.