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Coral reefs provide important ecosystem services as well as economic and cultural benefits to society. Yet they are under significant threat from anthropogenic and natural threats, including climate change. Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is one such reef undergoing significant change. More radical interventions that go beyond traditional forms of management are being considered to help repair and restore the GBR. These are based on science and technologies that have yet to be widely tested. This paper reports on a study that seeks to identify and understand support for such interventions, and to understand the antecedents that explain support. The Norm Activation Model (NAM) was extended with a sample of 468 domestic and international tourists to Cairns, Australia. Personal norms had the largest direct influence on support for interventions, followed by attitudes. Awareness of consequences had a large positive impact on personal norms and a smaller positive impact on attitudes. A negative relationship was found between information and attitudes. Personal norms and attitudes also acted as mediators between awareness of consequences, information and support. No differences were found between domestic and international tourists. The results are discussed and theoretical and practical implications outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable destinations must deliver products that perform better than their competitors and at the same time protect key environmental drawcards. This research explores the environmental–economic interface of a major destination, both as a case study in how to approach this complex relationship and as a contribution to the methodology of tackling the need for understanding competitive pressures as part of sustainable tourism strategy creation. Using the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA) as an example, the paper assesses 21 key environmental values, including Indigenous culture, against market-based factors, in terms of their importance for visitors as regional drawcards, satisfaction with them and the way in which changes in them might affect trip numbers and duration across different regions. While the natural values of the GBRWHA are found to be the most important drawcards, satisfaction scores were significantly lower than importance scores for a number of these values. Visitors responded more negatively to the prospect of environmental degradation than to the prospect of a 20% increase in local prices: the detailed impact depends, however, on location and visitor mix. Clear ocean, healthy coral reefs, healthy reef fish, and lack of rubbish were the top four most important values. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper challenges the accepted tenet that conservation creates attractive tourist experiences and high satisfaction rates, and explores the nature and value of partnerships between protected area managers and tourism operators. It develops a model to examine the linkages between natural resource management and nature-based tourism industry performance. The model uses input measures (such as the expertise and financial resources put into maintaining a healthy ecosystem), output measures (visitor perceptions of the environment and their experience of it) and outcome measures (satisfaction scores), to examine these linkages. Whilst the links between input, outputs and outcomes appear relatively weak, results suggest that operators can strengthen those links through high service quality, effective interpretation, in order to produce higher visitor satisfaction. The relationship between the natural environment itself and satisfaction was less clear, perhaps symptomatic of the “messiness” of protected area tourism systems where cause and effects are not always clear. The study suggests that perceptions of the natural environment and the nature-based tourist experience are best mediated through the tour operators’ input into creating and maintaining quality staff, to complement and demonstrate inputs by protected area managers, within the context of long-term partnerships between natural resource management and nature-based tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conservation agencies and eco-tourism operators spend considerable effort developing strategies and programs to educate visitors about environmental issues. Typically, these include appeals for individuals to adopt environmentally friendly lifestyles. A review of messages distributed by marine conservation organisations and studies on interpretive tourism experiences on the Great Barrier Reef indicate there are multiple suggestions about which conservation behaviours to adopt. Despite the vast variety of options, research reveals visitors' uptake of conservation behaviours following eco-tourism experiences is low. To contribute to an increase in conservation campaign effectiveness, this study uses a Delphi technique to ascertain the views of a panel of stakeholders who hold significant knowledge, experience and expertise in the health, management and conservation of coral reefs about which conservation behaviours would contribute most towards protecting the Great Barrier Reef and other sensitive marine environments. Initially, the panel identified over 60 actions and behaviours. Further iterations reduced this number to 34 items which were grouped into six categories. The categories ranked as most important were political actions and education. A comparison between expert opinions and current practice is made and implications and recommendations for the future design of reef-based interpretive programs and conservation campaigns are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publically documented decline in health of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) has led to its labelling, in media and academic literature, as a last chance tourism destination. That is, a place tourists travel to experience before it is gone. While the GBR has been labelled as such, no empirical evidence has identified that this is actually occurring. This article explores if tourists are motivated to visit the GBR to see it before it's gone, and examines the level of concern tourists have about the range of issues that are threatening the GBR. Drawing on 235 questionnaires with on-site tourists, the results indicate that tourists are seeking travel to the GBR in a bid to see the reef before it's too late. These tourists - identified as "seeking a last chance experience" - were also found to be more environmentally conscious, and have a higher level of concern about the overall health of the GBR. In terms of threats to the GBR, respondents indicated that they were mainly concerned about coral bleaching/disease and climate change, with tourism only considered as a moderate to low concern. The implications of this are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]