Unethical use of wildlife in tourism: what's the problem,who is responsible,and what can be done?

Wildlife tourism is a huge global market, the revenue from which can promote local livelihoods and tourist education, enact conservation, and improve animal welfare. Such benefits arise if wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs) prioritise ethical deliverables above financial profit, but recent work has shown that the majority of WTAs have substantial negative animal welfare and conservation impacts. In the absence of global regulatory authorities, tourist revenue has become the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes acceptable use of animals in WTAs. Tourists, however, are not adequate assessors of WTAs’ animal welfare and conservation impacts: they lack the specialist knowledge required and are subject to a number of psychological biases that obscure the ethical dimensions of decisions to attend particular WTAs. This inadequacy is evidenced, and compounded, by overwhelmingly positive reviews on TripAdvisor (the industry-leading review site), even for WTAs with objectively poor ethical standards. Our suggested solution is to empower tourists by presenting unequivocal assessments of WTAs' animal welfare and conservation impacts, hosted in the fora that tourists already use to make their travel decisions. We would thereby promote a subjective norm that tourists should consider and limit their individual negative impacts when choosing which WTAs to visit.     

Personalisation–privacy paradox: The effects of personalisation and privacy assurance on customer responses to travel Web sites

Personalisation refers to individualizing products, services, and contents according to customer interests and preferences. In order to deliver appropriate personalised offerings, firms inevitably need to collect rich customer data profiles. Prior research suggests that personalised services lead to positive customer responses such as increased willingness to disclose personal information and make purchases. However, another stream of research emphasizes negative outcomes of personalisation – namely, privacy concerns surrounding the use of personal information and associated negative effects on behaviour. The objectives of this study are twofold: (1) to examine how privacy assurance affects proximal outcomes of personalisation, such as perceived usefulness and privacy concerns; and (2) to identify the role such outcomes play in predicting customer behavioural responses, such as willingness to disclose personal information and make purchases. Our findings show that enhancing privacy assurance increases the perceived usefulness of services and decreases customer privacy concerns. Moreover, customer behavioural responses are positively related to the perceived usefulness of services and negatively associated with privacy concerns. However, despite the positive effects on perceived usefulness and purchase intentions, personalisation has no effect on privacy concerns and intentions to disclose personal information.     

The Learning Tourism Destination: The potential of a learning organisation approach for improving the sustainability of tourism destinations

Globalisation, increasing complexity, and the need to address triple-bottom line sustainability have seen the proliferation of Learning Organisations (LO) who, by definition, have the capacity to anticipate environmental changes and economic opportunities and adapt accordingly. Such organisations use system dynamics modelling (SDM) for both strategic planning and the promotion of organisational learning. Although SDM has been applied in the context of tourism destination management for predictive reasons, the current literature does not analyse or recognise how this could be used as a foundation for an LO. This study introduces the concept of the Learning Tourism Destinations (LTD) and discusses, on the basis of a review of six case studies, the potential of SDM as a tool for the implementation and enhancement of collective learning processes. The results reveal that SDM is capable of promoting communication between stakeholders and stimulating organisational learning. It is suggested that the LTD approach be further utilised and explored.     

Are Chinese nationals’ attitudes to wildlife tourist attractions different from those of other nationalities?

Many wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs) have negative impacts on animal welfare and species conservation. In the absence of regulation, raising standards requires tourists to create market pressure by choosing to attend WTAs with benefits for wildlife. We surveyed respondents from five countries – China, Australia, Canada, UK, and USA – to quantify how attitudes to captive animals, and towards WTAs’ outputs and standards, may vary with nationality. Our aim was to provide a firm basis for behaviour change interventions to alter current patterns of tourist consumption of WTAs. All respondents agreed on the importance of conservation and animal welfare, but Chinese respondents were twice as likely to believe that WTAs would not be allowed to exist if they were bad for animals, and that WTAs’ promotional materials were reliable indicators of welfare and conservation standards. These findings indicate Chinese respondents had fundamentally similar attitudes to those from the other countries, but differed in how those attitudes were likely to be applied. Chinese tourists may experience more barriers to aligning their actions with their values with respect to WTAs. Removing these barriers may require information campaigns to highlight the lack of regulation, and the unreliability of some WTAs’ promotional materials and tourists’ reviews.     

Progression,Stability, or Decline? Sociological Mechanisms Underlying Change in Specialization Among Birdwatchers

Using a panel of American birdwatchers collected in 1997 and 2002, we tested the extent to which birdwatchers progressed over a five-year period. The impact different career contingencies and life course events had on predicting change in birdwatchers' behavior, skill, and commitment was also examined. Findings indicated that although progression characterized some birdwatchers' participation, involvement by others was better characterized by stability or decline, which was true for each of the indicators used to measure specialization. Career contingencies and life course changes had only a moderate influence on predicting change in the specialization indicators over time. Support from family members and retirement were the best predictors of change in specialization.