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Nature-based tourism (NBT) intentions that changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic are different from those not only before the COVID-19 but also during the COVID-19 period. We recruited 558 American participants over two time periods in 2020 and 2021 and compared their NBT intentions by adopting the health belief model (HBM). The results for 2020 indicated that intrapersonal barriers negatively influence attitudes and NBT intentions; however, they did not exert significant effects on the attitudes of the 2021 batch, partially confirming changes in the relationship between study variables. Moreover, NBT intentions increased in 2021 compared to those in 2020, but the extent of the increase differed by demographic variables. NBT intentions were higher among those who were under 40 years of age, married, and highly educated. This study is novel as it used HBM to elucidate NBT intentions as a protective behaviour during the ongoing pandemic and offered valuable contributions to the implementation of expeditious marketing strategies to promote NBT to potential tourists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insight into consumer value forms the basis for successful tourism management. The means-end structures of consumer value in tourism are mainly investigated by qualitative, in-depth laddering interviews while structured, quantitative laddering is less common. This study develops quantitative laddering by digitalizing the Association Pattern Technique (APT) in order to increase its interactive customization. The feasibility of digitally customized APT is piloted by investigating 956 nature-based tourists visiting Finnish national parks. The evaluation of the method is based on epistemological laddering criteria and usability. The results demonstrate greater contextuality, increased sample relevance, delivery of complete chains, and decreased risks of misunderstandings compared to conventional APT. Hence, digitalized APT holds potential for examining the structure of consumer value and its larger sample size also reveals less apparent means-end chains and universal values. However, its wider adoption into managerial processes would benefit from the development of specific software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within nature-based tourism research, authenticity has received a great deal of attention in relation to existential authenticity and in examining the authenticity of experiences. Yet very little research exists that explores the ways in which tourists perceive wildlife as more or less authentic, as objects in nature-based tourism discourses. This qualitative case study research explores visitors' perspectives in relation to polar bear tourism in Churchill, Manitoba (in situ) and at the Assiniboine Park Zoo's 'Journey to Churchill' exhibit (ex situ) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The 'Journey to Churchill' exhibit was built with the intention of representing aspects of the landscape, wildlife and town-site found in and around Churchill, Manitoba. These two sites provide a unique opportunity to compare in situ and ex situ nature-based tourism experiences, since the sites have similar elements such as wildlife species, landscape features and other contextual factors (such as environmental issues and cultural influence). The findings from this research suggests that perceived authenticity of the polar bears, more than the experience, contributes to the construction of learning experiences about climate change. We review the work of authenticity in nature-based tourism and suggest a rethinking of the work of authenticity for both educators and operators in nature tourism. This research has important implications for better understanding how visitors construct their perceptions of authenticity of wildlife and the implications for the ways in which wildlife tourism experiences and authenticity narratives are constructed in Anthropocene tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the centrality of multiple environmentalities at multiple scales in the post-politicization of conservation governance in Jasper National Park, Canada. Austerity politics in Canada contributed to the post-politicization of conservation as the interests of Parks Canada and private developers were brought into alignment in terms of increasing visitation and the revenue imperative. The Parks Canada Agency, under structural pressure, employed several post-political strategies to suture the space for dissensus and debate and orchestrate the appearance of consent for the private development and management of park services. Central to these strategies were multiple (sovereign, disciplinary, and neoliberal) environmentalities constructed at multiple scales by multiple actors (the federal government, the local parks department, and private sector interests) aimed at producing environmental subjects who understand and acquiesce to the idea that 'there is no alternative' to a privatized conservation practice. In response, opponents attempted to mobilize an alternative environmentality, combining a social democratic critique of neoliberalism with a Romantic vision of wilderness conservation. Although opponents enrolled a sizeable number of allies, they fell short of stabilizing a liberation environmentality as several underlying points of 'agreement' contributed to the stabilization of post-political discourse and practice, foreclosing alternative political economies of conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates domestic and international tourists' "gaze" using tourism imagery. Domestic and international tourists' preferences are critically examined using the concept of the "tourist gaze" and "local gaze." Through qualitative, in-depth photo-elicitation interviews (PEIs) guided by 16 photographs covering various tourist attractions in Botswana, results indicate dissimilar tourist gazes between international and domestic tourists. Culture, livelihoods, and crowded spaces, with a variety of activities, influence domestic tourists' gaze, whereas privacy, tranquility, and quietness influence the international tourists' gaze. The tourist gaze thus can be seen as a culturally contingent concept that is not universal. Despite the differences, results indicate the continued promotion of an international tourist's gaze. Results help explain low visitation by domestic tourists to protected areas in Botswana and Africa. In view of the study's results, theoretical and policy implications are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to test the validity of the new Tourism Autobiographical Memory Scale (TAMS) that measures visitor experience through personal memory. The TAMS uses the autobiographical memory framework to represent the degree to which a travel experience was impactful to a traveler's life. Visitors were asked to recall a memory from their visit to a national park and rate the memory of the experience based on its impact and frequency of rehearsal on a 7-point scale. Using exploratory factor analysis and reliability testing, two distinct factors emerged. Results identified a reliable measure of a memory's impact and frequency of rehearsal of tourists. The TAMS provides researchers a new scale to gather information about the impact of a visitor experience from the direct source—personal memories. Destination managers who understand the impact they can have on a traveler will be able to manage and market to those types of experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism is an important industry to many regions around the world and has the potential to substantially impact local communities. Climate change is expected to influence tourism since weather patterns help determine where and when people travel. In this analysis, the effect of weather conditions on tourism-related spending at three geographically distinct locations in Maine, United States, was evaluated. A nonparametric method (boosted regression trees) was used to first identify the relative influence of twenty-two weather variables as predictors of tourism spending. Following this, a parametric model was constructed to statistically evaluate tourism spending across different measures and predict potential spending changes due to a warming climate. Results indicated that warmer temperatures increased tourism spending in the summer and fall, but had more varying results in the winter. Findings suggest tourism businesses in Maine and other relatively colder destinations could capitalize on potential gains in warmer months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used 268 household and 13 key informant interviews to get the views of Livingstone city residents on economic, environmental and sociocultural effects of tourism on local households and the city. Results show very few economic benefits at household level with residents perceiving big tourism-related businesses, the state and its officials to be the main beneficiaries. Although tourists were commended for helping vulnerable residents, they were blamed for contributing to prostitution and diseases by local residents; and were targeted for petty thefts by unemployed youths. Sociocultural effects of tourism are significant for residents but are routinely ignored or glossed over by tourism development practitioners. Tourism had resulted in a general improvement in the city environs. It is concluded that tourism development projects must target increased benefits for residents to increase benevolent attitudes from them towards tourism in their city, and to ensure a more sustainable variant of tourism is achieved in the tourist capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Winter sports tourism is a key economic factor in many mountain regions worldwide. Research to date has concentrated on economic and environmental questions related to winter sports and winter outdoor activities, with the impacts of climate change and adaptation strategies being the dominant fields of discussion. An analysis of German winter holidays indicates that winter sports are only one of several product types. The fact that the majority of German travellers prefer long-haul warm weather destinations in the winter raises the question of triggering factors for winter holiday trips. A qualitative study based on a Germany-wide online discussion forum analyses all aspects of winter trips. It centres on people’s everyday life during the winter and their linked emotions, travel motives, destination choices and general expectations, in particular with relation to trips to Alpine destinations. The results show that the grey winter weather and factors such as cold, humidity, lack of sun and dull atmosphere are the dominant factors in the desire to escape on a holiday trip. Non-skiers expect snow-covered landscapes and an environment conducive to relaxation-related activities and are therefore likely to be looking for sustainable winter products. This supports Alpine destination managers who are developing sustainable winter products in addition to winter sports in order to become more competitive in the non-skier market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a dyadic approach to the conceptualization of nature-based tourism (NBT) destinations. Treating the natural area and its gateway city as distinct evaluative objects, we propose that tourists may differentially assess each element of a city–park dyad based on the degree to which the attributes of each are perceived as conducive to the fulfillment of NBT-specific goals. By empirically testing this perspective, this study reveals the unique complexities of NBT. The findings indicate that nature-based tourists have distinct perceptions of natural areas and their gateway cities. The results also reveal that proenvironmental attitudes motivate individuals to engage in NBT and are associated with a positive image of the natural area. However, these proenvironmental attitudes also yield negative attitudes toward the human-made attributes of the gateway city, which result in a negative image of the city itself. The principal implications for future research and application are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism plays an important role in economic and human development in the Pacific. These benefits are at risk from the impacts of climate change, threatening the sustainability of the Pacific tourism sector. We assess the vulnerability and resilience of nature-based tourism in Vava’u, Tonga, using the Destination Sustainability Framework of Calgaro (2014) modified for a climate change focus. Our empirical assessment indicates that the following factors increase vulnerability levels in Vava’u: strong seasonality, dependency on air access, remoteness, limited connectivity of Vava’u from national decision makers and limited human and financial resources. Resilience levels in Vava’u are heightened by a high awareness of climate change, the resilient nature of Tongans and strong family and social networks. In conclusion, we recommend a set of adaptation strategies to further improve resilience levels, namely improving climate change education, increasing product and market diversification, strengthening institutional capacities and mainstreaming adaptation in national policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the historical relationship between viewing or ‘gazing’ and tourism, it is rather incongruous that the concept of aesthetics has received little attention in tourism marketing and nature-based tourism research. Although a substantial body of literature exists on aesthetic notions with regard to landscape preferences and the establishment of national parks, the literature is limited on the concept as it relates to man-made environments in nature-based tourism. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to add to the understanding of the concept of aesthetics in the context of nature-based tourism. This study’s main results from qualitative interviews with key informants reveal five aesthetic dimensions that may influence the tourists’ satisfaction in a nature-based tourism context: ‘harmony’, ‘variation/contrast’, ‘scenery/viewing’, ‘genuineness’, and ‘art/architecture’. The study closes with suggestions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the growth of nature-based tourism, national parks have become important tourist attractions and tools for regional development. This article examines how the role of tourism changed in national park planning in Finland in the 2000s by analyzing official planning documents of parks. The planning documents and the policies guiding them are seen to reflect the governance aspects of parks. The study indicates that the role and management value of tourism have clearly increased in Finnish national park planning. In the planning documents, tourism is increasingly justified not only with recreational and educational arguments but also by the aspects of regional development. The aim has been to combine the ecological goals of nature conservation and the socioeconomic goals of nature-based tourism by implementing the principles of sustainable development. This discursive policy shift reflects the rise of neoliberalist politics in which nature conservation has become more instrumental and market oriented than before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will discuss the ways in which landscapes have been conceptualised in current literature building on notions of escape to and well-being with nature, and how the tourist has been placed in that context. Drawing among other things on Gadamer’s understanding of the concept of the horizon, as well as Deleuzian understandings of relationality, we argue that landscape is simultaneously an effect of gathering deep-seated emotions and experiences and an open-ended and forever unfinished story. Due to the irreducibility of the landscape to its terms, a landscape is something that can be shared. We will outline how current practices of tourism marketing and promotion in Iceland could in effect mediate landscape experiences in a way that recognises the tourist as an author of his or her own experiences, rather than a predefined stereotype as in much tourism literature. Recognising the tourist as potentially inspired by landscape, we argue, commands the attitude of respect that is a necessary precondition to any ethical notions of hospitality, altering the preconditions of marketing practices using the landscape to their ends. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to contribute to problematizing the notion of nature in Icelandic nature-based tourism. Despite a fairly robust recent definition of nature-based tourism by the Icelandic Ministry of Industry as “travellers’ varied experience of nature,” in fact, the definition of nature in this context seems limited to places supposedly unspoilt by human influence, and that rather simplistic understanding seems overly prevalent in the discourse of Icelandic tourism. The concept of “nature-based” tourism is necessarily reductive if it is limited to areas conceptualized as pristine. Many places that are identified primarily through their anthropogenic features would not be adequately understood without considering their ecological properties, and certain areas with significant anthropogenic elements give rise to specific—and in many ways unique—experiences of flora and fauna. Central among them are ruins, where ambiguous space is occupied spontaneously, where interactions with the nonhuman can be more unexpected, startling, and dangerous than in more regulated areas. If tourists come to Iceland chiefly due to the country’s spectacular náttúra, the Icelandic tourism industry is well advised to be mindful of the many derelict and abandoned contemporary structures found across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A traditional Romantic fix for the stress and strain of the everyday has been the idea of ‘getting back to nature’, exploring places of natural grandeur and beauty based on the belief in nature’s therapeutic agency on the traveller. This article introduces a theoretical framework that offers a way to explore how touristic spaces are lived within a human–non-human co-constituted affective process. It then engages with the spaces of nature-based tourism and reports findings from an ethnographic study on British-based trekking holiday to Iceland. These findings suggest that the emotions and therapeutic affect that have traditionally been reported from spending time in nature are relational outcomes; they depend both on nature’s performance and on what the individual contributes to the relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the performances and narratives of nature-based tourists, more specifically of trampers, on Stewart Island, a remote tourism destination located in the southern waters of Aotearoa/New Zealand. It does so by reflecting on the concepts of commodification and of spectacle and how these may influence the experiences of tourists on the wild landscapes of Stewart Island. The study used an interpretive and embedded methodology, where the author was able to engage with the experiences of Others while tramping for extended periods of time on the island. This article concludes that the trampers’ experience of nature on Stewart Island is modulated by a media-constructed and media-sold tourism concept that fits well in a cultural and physical landscape that is able to provide an experience associated with a produced ‘nature’. Nature is therefore constructed to allow for an experience that is designed prior to the actual performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interpretation has been recognized as a useful tool in managing visitor behavior in nature-based tourism areas. This study explores a multiple assessment approach to identify the strengths and weaknesses of site-based interpretation in influencing multidimensional aspects of attitudes and behavioral intentions toward local environmental issues. Visitors to the Lulworth coastal area in England were studied using on-site questionnaire survey data. The results of the research highlight that the effectiveness of interpretation varied in relation to a number of different aspects of responsible environmental behavior and local conservation issues. The findings also reveal that it fostered visitors’ awareness of and their support for management policies but its impacts were limited to site-specific responsible behavior related in this case to geological and environmental conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Whether out of economic circumstance or a genuine desire to reconnect with nature, recent years have witnessed increased demand for nature-based forms of tourism activity. Alongside this interest in the outdoors has come a demand for quality servicing infrastructure to meet the very wide variety of needs, wants and expectations expressed and sought by today's traveling public. This has presented a range of challenges to those in the nature-based tourism supply sector, not least those at the front line, whose role is now shifting from environmental stewardship and education to one of customer service agent. Against this background this paper seeks to address the issue of quality product/service provision in satisfying nature based tourists in the state of Alabama. A study of visitor perceptions in 23 state parks sought to evaluate visitor satisfaction with state park camping service provision and its role in driving visitors future behavior with respect to potential re-visitation and recommendation intention. Results attest to the psychometric performance of the research instrument, as well as pointing to the key drivers of both dependent variables. An exploratory factor analysis identifies four factors that are critical to the sample population in terms of explaining and predicting both satisfaction and behavioral intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between environmental attitudes as measured by the new environmental paradigm (NEP) and nature-based tourism (NBT) motivations based on data gathered from a national forest park in China. The results indicate that tourists' environmental attitudes are heterogeneous across all four tourism motivations. Specifically, those who are more supportive of limits to growth and who are more concerned about ecocrisis tend to have a higher desire to be close to nature, to learn about nature, and to escape from routine and issues associated with cities. In addition, those whose motivations are oriented to develop skills and abilities or seek to experience new things, environments, and social contact tend to be more supportive of the notion of human over nature. Thus, it can be concluded that environmental attitudes and NBT motivations are closely and positively related. Research limits, theoretical and practical implications, and future research needs of the study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the rapid growth of tourism, different forms of tourism have emerged. Among these is nature-based tourism, which in fact is considered to be increasing more quickly than tourism as a whole. There is a general consensus that tourism marketers and planners need to obtain systematic knowledge about nature-based tourists. The literature suggests, however, that there may be different types of nature tourists depending on their degree of specialization. The aim of this study is to examine whether nature tourists can be clustered into two broad segments as specialists and generalists, and, if so, whether and how these two segments differ from each other. The necessary data were collected from 162 visitors at two nature-based attractions (wilderness centres) located in northern Norway. Using a single psychographic dimension (i.e. motivation) it was possible to classify the respondents into specialists and generalists. The former travelled mainly for nature reasons, whereas the latter had reasons other than only nature for travelling. These two groups were subsequently compared on the basis of their socio-demographic and trip characteristics, travel motives and activities. The results indicated that specialist and generalist nature-based tourists differed significantly, principally in terms of nationality, trip purpose, trip length and travel motives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this study was to develop a further understanding of the construct of mindfulness and its application in managing Visitors to natural, cultural, or historically based tourism destinations. Mindfulness represents a state of mind expressed by actively processing available information (e.g., brochures) within the surrounding environment, while mindlessness is considered a type of disengage.. men,' from information in one's surroundings A 7-item Likert-type-scaled mindfulness measure was modified and administered to Visitors at four southeastern coastal parks in April/May 1998 Three groups, "not very mindful," "mindful," and "very mindful," were identified. Significant differences (p <.05) were found among the three groups concerning benefits sought, preference for services, and participation in nature-oriented activities, with the very mindful group standing apart from the other two. Application of mindfulness principles may provide a framework for tourism destinations in meeting Visitor needs while also aiding resource management efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cluster analysis involving 1,244 visitors to six popular recreational sites in the hinterland of Australia's Gold Coast revealed diverse attitudes toward tourism development and product integration in this urban-rural fringe, although biocentric tendencies and a desire to maintain the hinterland in its present condition were dominant in all clusters. Hinterland protectives (n = 206) are not supportive of integrating the hinterland with the Gold Coast tourism product, while hinterland sharers (n = 406) strongly support integration and increased visitation. Hinterland neutrals (n = 231) do not have strong opinions about this issue, and integration ambivalents (n = 345) are caught between the desire to preserve and integrate the hinterland. Significant differences between the clusters were identified by site, motivation, group size, repeat visitation, duration of visit, age, residence, and education. These results indicate distinct dynamics in the urban-rural fringe and will potentially assist the sustainable tourism and recreation development of such areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]