Modelling attitudes to nature,tourism and sustainable development in national parks: A survey of visitors in China and the UK

This research undertook a visitor survey in two protected areas in different cultural contexts, namely China and the UK, to explore whether the value a person attaches to the environment influences their attitude towards sustainable tourism development in national parks. Structural equation models were developed with data from 597 and 368 questionnaires collected in Jiuzhaigou National Scenic Area, China and the New Forest National Park, UK respectively. The results suggested that anthropocentric or ecocentric values significantly influence people's attitudes to tourism and sustainable development. The same structured causal relationship was found in both samples, between people's attitudes towards the natural environment, conservation and tourism in a national park context.     

The effects of environmental and luxury beliefs on intention to patronize green hotels: the moderating effect of destination image

Recent research has demonstrated a disconnect between environmental beliefs and behavior when it comes to the consumption of hospitality products. Unfortunately, while many consumers believe that hotels should engage in green practices, there is mounting evidence that such beliefs do not necessarily translate into actual purchases of sustainable products. The purpose of this research is to examine this issue by developing an integrated framework establishing the relationships among the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors associated with the consumption of the green hotel product. In particular, we are concerned with the effects of consumers' beliefs regarding the luxury-based trade-offs associated with staying in green hotels. Additionally, we seek to establish the role of destination image as a determinant of the relationships specified in the proposed nomology. The results support our overall hypothesis that the established disconnect between environmental values and sustainable hospitality consumption behavior is at least partially attributable to the cognitive evaluation of the attributes of the hotel's destination. Specifically, our results show that, while the belief that green hotels are less luxurious translates to unfavorable attitudes toward green hotels in urban tourism destinations, this relationship does not occur in nature-based tourism destinations.     

The coastal tourism industry in the Mediterranean: A critical review of the socio-economic and environmental pressures & impacts

Tourism is a vital economic source in the Mediterranean basin. The sun and beach tourists are of major social and economic importance for almost all Mediterranean countries. However, this industry's extensive and uncontrolled growth may negatively impact these fragile natural coastline areas. In the present study, we review and analyse the driver's forces, pressures, and impacts of the tourism sector development in the Mediterranean countries' environment and economy by using the D (Driver) P (Pressure) S (State) I (Impact) R (Responses) analytical framework. The analysis highlights the critical social and economic roles the coastal tourism industry plays while the steady and uncontrolled growth of this sector and related activities compromise these coastal countries' ecology and environmental quality. This requires the decision-makers and stakeholders' attention toward adopting new strategies and approaches toward greening the blue tourism industry to ensure sustainable economic, social and environmental growth of this industry. In this perspective, we point out the necessity to incorporate environmental issues with economic and socio-cultural needs to obtain complete and harmonized sustainable tourism indicators in the Mediterranean.     

Understanding primary stakeholders' multiple roles in hallmark event tourism management

This paper contributes insights into stakeholder theory in hallmark event tourism and the implications for engaging primary stakeholders in further tourism management settings. The tangible and symbolic tourism benefits instilled in destinations by hallmark events are well-documented; with destination managers increasingly adopting event portfolio approaches to nurture and develop existing and new hallmark events. Nevertheless, limited understanding exists of how stakeholders engage with hallmark events over time; their lived experiences in event tourism; and consequent management implications. This paper uncovers multiple and shifting roles of primary stakeholders in a long-established hallmark event tourism context (Edinburgh's Festival Fringe). It presents a typology identifying five primary stakeholder roles. Phenomenological interviews with twenty-one primary stakeholders revealed that most fulfilled multiple roles. Existing concurrently and historically, these differed throughout stakeholders' lived experiences and engagement. In its findings, this paper extends knowledge of stakeholders' roles in event tourism and implications in further tourism management settings.     

Energy Saving and Carbon Reduction Behaviors in Tourism – A Perception Study of Asian Visitors from a Protection Motivation Theory Perspective

Many researchers suggest that global warming and the effect of greenhouse gases pose environmental threat worldwide, not to mention a threat to the sustainable development of the tourism industry. For tourism, social and behavioral changes and tourist management and education are important for energy saving and carbon reduction (ESCR). The purpose of this research is to explore tourists' ESCR behavior and its influent factors. The research framework is based on the protection motivation theory to investigate ESCR behavior in the tourism, restaurant and hotel industries. It used the survey method on 512 foreign tourists in Taiwan to discuss the environmental protection behavior. Through the linear regression analysis, obvious differences between tourists' ESCR behavior intention and actual behavior are found. A suggestion for tourism environmental education is provided according to the study result.     

Addressing zero-hunger through tourism? Food security outcomes from two tourism destinations in rural Ethiopia

Underpinned by sustainable livelihood thinking, this study investigated community stakeholders' perspectives on the impacts of tourism on food security in two rural tourism destinations: Debarq and Meket in Ethiopia. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with a range of stakeholders to solicit their perspectives, revealing the complexity of the tourism and food security relationship. Although tourism had brought about some small changes to food availability, access and utilisation, there were limitations around its contribution to food stability. This was primarily due to the nature of tourism employment and lack of linkages between tourism and local agriculture. Tourism was not strong enough nor properly integrated with existing livelihoods to support the local communities' food security, generally only offering a minor contribution. This research highlights the challenges for tourism to contribute to local communities' food security, offering policy-relevant guidance for addressing the food security challenges of tourism destinations.     

Why It's Good To Be Bad: The Role of Conflict in Contributing Towards Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas

This paper examines the historic and contemporary role of one Canadian environmental non-governmental organisation (ENGO) in the operationalisation of sustainable tourism. In particular, the extent to which the ENGO has contributed to coordinated, cooperative policy development and implementation within this policy domain is examined. While coordinated policy making is widely accepted as a basis for environmentally sustainable tourism development, organisations may contribute more towards this goal by choosing not to be included, or by being excluded from, this framework of coordination. This paper uses an interorganisational relations perspective to explore the position, influence and relationships of one ENGO active within Canada's national park tourism policy domain. Implications are drawn for the implementation of sustainable tourism within protected areas.     

Sustaining urban place-making

Educational travel, a neglected area of study in sustainable tourism, has grown substantially over the last 20 years in part as a response to institutional missions to promote international education, but also as a result of the USA's national security concerns to nurture a global citizenry. Considerable future growth is predicted following the bipartisan Lincoln Commission report and under the pending new legislation in the USA. Our pre-test/post-test study of almost 5% (n = 651 US students) of the entire short-term, US educational travel market to Australia and New Zealand between 2008 and 2009 revealed significant differences between the cohorts of the two programs, both of which focused on sustainable development. The Australia program not only produced significant increases in global citizenship (as measured by scores on consumer behaviors, support for environmental policies, and environmental citizenship) beyond that of the New Zealand program, but any initial differences between the programs were erased following participation. Reasons for the differences in attitude change are discussed. Analysis also noted key differences between students with different political orientations, but no gender differences. Implications for managing educational travel, marketing Australia's and New Zealand's tourism, sustainable tourism planning, and theory advancements are discussed.     

Current issues in tourism: Mitigating climate change in sustainable tourism research

This paper adopts a problematising review approach to examine the extent of mitigating climate change research in the sustainable tourism literature. As climate change has developed into an existential global environmental crisis and while tourism's emissions are still increasing, one would expect it to be at the heart of sustainable tourism research. However, from a corpus of 2573 journal articles featuring ‘sustainable tourism’ in their title, abstract, or keywords, only 6.5% covered climate change mitigation. Our critical content analysis of 35 of the most influential papers found that the current methods, scope and traditions of tourism research hamper effective and in-depth research into climate change. Transport, the greatest contributor to tourism's emissions, was mostly overlooked, and weak definitions of sustainability were common. Tight system boundaries, lack of common definitions and incomplete data within tourism studies appear to hamper assessing ways to mitigate tourism's contribution to climate change.     

Industrial tourists' behavioral intention toward slow travel in Taiwan

Taiwan has experienced rapid growth in the last decade, especially in the number of international tourists and domestic leisure travelers it receives. In response to pressures to minimize the negative environmental impacts of such visits (i.e. greenhouse gas emissions) and reshape the notion of sustainable destinations, since 2010 the concept of slow travel has been promoted by governments and the tourism industry. Consequently, calls to expand programs connecting various destinations (e.g. the establishment of industrial tourism) using slower modes of transportation have begun to emerge. In an effort to elucidate the key factors that motivate a traveler's intention to engage in slow travel, this study has constructed a research model that incorporates slow travel's three core elements: the mode of slow travel, tourism experience and environmental consciousness. Particularly, this study has focused on industrial tourists who typically rely on cars to reach destinations that have become new tourism hotspots. The quality of the transportation mode (i.e. a shuttle bus) and the tourism experience were found to be the most powerful determinants of their intentions. This study provides important information to practitioners seeking to market slow travel as a form of sustainable tourism and an alternative to conventional leisure.     

Protected area policies and sustainable tourism: influences,relationships and co-evolution

This paper explores the adoption of sustainable tourism ideas in a Park Authority's policies over a period of two decades in a developed world, category V protected area. There is only limited research on influences encouraging the inclusion of sustainable tourism ideas in protected area policies, or on relationships between sustainable tourism policies and other policy priorities. The paper departs from an approach which considers sustainable tourism policies in isolation, because potentially they are reformulations or extensions of other previous policies, or else indirect outcomes of other policies. There is assessment of influences on the Park Authority's sustainable tourism policies, and of the co-evolution between sustainable tourism policies and other policies. Such influences as government funding reductions and rising concern for community well-being affected the Authority's adoption of sustainable tourism ideas. Incorporation of sustainable tourism ideas in policies occurred gradually. It involved re-labelling established policies as well as reframing and extending those policies. It was often an indirect outcome of policy developments not focused specifically on sustainable tourism. Sustainable tourism-related policies co-evolved with, and through, policies for community well-being, actor participation, and sustainable development. The approach used here is relevant for research on policy co-evolution in other policy fields.     

Motivations to engage in last chance tourism in the Churchill Wildlife Management Area and Wapusk National Park: the role of place identity and nature relatedness

The threat that climate change impacts pose to rare and vulnerable destinations has given rise to a phenomenon known as last chance tourism. This travel behaviour involves tourists increasingly travelling to destinations they perceive to be critically threatened, while contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts in these very places. For last chance destinations to be managed effectively in the face of climate change, a clearer understanding of what drives this travel behaviour is needed. Drawing on the importance of place and nature to identity construction, this research uses a structural equation modelling approach to examine last chance tourism motivations in Churchill, Canada. Results provide evidence of a motivation to engage in a last chance experience. They also indicate that this motivation is related to a desire to share a connection to nature with similar individuals, and to become part of the local story. Beyond this, results show that visitors' sense of place identity and nature relatedness contribute significantly to their motivation to engage in last chance tourism. Findings from this research are important to the management of last chance destinations, including protected areas that are legislated to preserve significant natural and cultural features.     

Computer Simulation as a Tool for Planning and Management of Visitor Use in Protected Natural Areas

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Principles on Implementation of Sustainable Tourism suggest that implementing sustainable tourism must include monitoring visitor use of protected natural areas and directing it to areas where the environmental and social impacts of tourism are minimised. Thus, sustainable tourism management requires information about the spatial and temporal flow of visitor use in protected natural areas to help identify potential tourism-related threats to the natural and cultural resources of an area and the quality of visitors’ experiences. Recent research has identified at least four ways in which simulation modelling of visitor use can facilitate more informed planning and management of sustainable tourism in protected natural areas, including (1) describing existing visitor use flows; (2) monitoring the condition of ‘hard to measure’ indicator variables; (3) testing the effectiveness of alternative visitor use management practices; and (4) guiding the design of research on public attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate, using findings from studies conducted in the Inyo National Forest and Isle Royale National Park, USA, each of these four potential contributions of computer simulation to sustainable tourism management and planning. The paper concludes with an assessment of the limitations of existing applications of computer simulation to nature-based tourism and recommendations for future research.     

Strategic orientation and performance of tourism firms: Evidence from a developing country

This study investigates whether tourism firms in a developing country, namely Turkey, which adopt one of the four strategic orientations of Miles and Snow (1978), differ based on their financial and non-financial performance. The study results show that there is a difference in both financial and non-financial performance based on the strategic orientations followed by tourism enterprises. Generally, prospectors were found to outperform defenders, whereas analyzers showed a comparable performance to prospectors. The findings of this study imply that in developing countries, tourism businesses may be indifferent when choosing between these two strategies based on their internal characteristics since they yield similar financial results. Specific factors and developments in the macro environment and company-specific factors seem to affect tourism firms' strategic orientation as well as their performance. Better understanding and closer analysis of such factors can help improve the performance of tourism businesses in developing countries. Further research using both perceptual and objective measures is needed to confirm the present results to better assess possible differences in performance among strategic orientations in some other developing countries.     

Evolution of tourism in a flagship protected area of China

Nature-based tourism in protected areas, which is growing worldwide, offers much potential to enhance biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation, and ultimately sustainable development. Understanding the evolution of protected areas as tourism destinations and the causes and consequences of changing supply and demand elements is an essential step toward sustainably managing tourism in these critical ecosystems. This research applied the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model to illustrate and analyze the 30-year evolution of tourism in Wolong Nature Reserve. Being inscribed in UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage programmes, Wolong is a flagship protected area in China. We showed that the Reserve experienced exploration, involvement, and development stages of the TALC before tourism growth was completely halted by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008. We systematically investigated the changes related to the evolution of tourism and identified various internal and external driving forces. We examined the dynamics of politics, economy, and tourism growth that might propel the Reserve through the life cycle and identified significant tourism governance structural changes through the stages. The results have implications for sustainable tourism development in China's protected areas and also contribute to a broader and general understanding of the complex relationships between protected areas, sustainable tourism, and community development.     

Exploring event bundling: The strategy and its impacts

The objectives of this article are to explore the strategy of event bundling from the perspectives of varied event stakeholders including event organizers, event attendees, and destination marketing organizations (DMOs); and to examine the strategy's impacts on the relationships between perceived event value and visitors' trip outcome (perceived trip value and destination loyalty intention). Based on a mixed-method approach, the research first investigates stakeholders' perceptions and perceived value of event bundling from a qualitative approach in Study 1. It further tests a proposed framework through a quantitative approach in Study 2, in which two well-known events in Macau, China were chosen as an event bundle and a large sample of over 800 respondents were surveyed. Findings from the research advance the literature on event tourism and tourism product bundling practices. They further provide insights for DMOs and event planners in event policymaking and destination marketing.     

Ecotour Guide Training in Less Developed Countries: Some Preliminary Research Findings

This paper presents a critical discussion of the internationally prevailing understanding of the concept 'sustainable tourism'. It is argued that the current focus on stationary activities and local, intensive environmental issues is too limited both in relation to the concept of tourism and the concept of sustainable development. There is no tourism without travel. And, as shown in a Norwegian research study, tourist travel is a major source of serious environmental problems. The paper emphasises that sustainable tourism should be linked to a concept of sustainable mobility. However, this mobility would imply not only a change in the means of transport but also a reduced level of mobility in the rich part of the world. As this would entail new forms of tourism, other than those solely based on auto- and aeromobility, it represents a major challenge for the future development of tourism.     

Environmental performance of tourism accommodations in the protected areas: Case of Goreme Historical National Park

This study was designed to explore the nature of environmental performance of tourism accommodations in Goreme Historical National Park which is in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The data were collected from 73 accommodation managers by using survey questionnaire that included 39 environmental performance indicators. Findings show that tourism accommodations have low performance on energy efficiency, water conservation, responsible waste management, communication, environmental training, the environmental awareness, necessary knowledge about and interest in the environmental protection and environmental policy. The accommodations need to have environmentally sensitive, concerned and knowledgeable managerial staff in order to preserve ecological integrity in protected areas.     

Tea tourism development in Xinyang,China: Stakeholders' view

Tea continues to be a popular beverage in the world. As a new niche tourism market, tea tourism has developed both in China and many other countries for decades, but academic research has lagged behind tea tourism development. This paper focuses on stakeholders' views of tourism development, their potential roles and concerns in the case of tea tourism in Xinyang prefecture of central China. Interviews and open ended questionnaires were conducted in 2007 and 2008. Qualitative analysis indicates the following: 1) According to stakeholders' view, tea tourism development in Xinyang failed despite many good tea tourism attractions, and better tea tourism planning, marketing and collaboration between stakeholders in Xinyang is required for successful tea tourism development; 2) Local government, tea garden owners, media, travel agencies and tea tourists are thought to be the principal stakeholders with different roles to develop tea tourism; 3) Collaboration between stakeholders is crucial for tea tourism development. The implications of the findings are discussed with a view to permit recommendations to be made.     

Influences on Tourism Development Decision Making: Coastal Local Government Areas in Eastern Australia

With sustainable development and specifically sustainable tourism, decision making is perhaps the area where the impact on the future of communities is most crucial. Understanding better the decision-making process, provides possibly the most important potential tool in the sustainable management of tourism development. This paper examines the influence factors on tourism decision making and sheds some light on how important various influences are in the tourism development decision process. A typology of community decision-making influence factors was examined through research on local government councillors in Australian coastal regions. Three major categories of this typology were identified in the literature and further explored in this study: inter-personal, intra-personal and circumstantial influence. Results from this study show that a number of influence factors which relate to sustainable tourism are considered by councillors to have a more profound effect on their decision making than only the components of social influence theory which has been discussed in much of the literature. Utilising this typology of community decision-making influence factors may form the foundation for further studies of decision making. The results suggest that influence factors on decision makers need to be both understood and taken into consideration for sustainable tourism approaches to be effectively implemented.