The characteristics and motivational decisions of outdoor adventure tourists: a review and analysis

The growing demand for outdoor adventure tourism activities, and the rapid growth in associated industry supply, means we need an improved understanding of outdoor adventure tourists. The paper considers the characteristics and motives of outdoor adventure tourists, as well as the influence of experience, age and gender on their motives. This is based, firstly, on a critical review of the relatively much more extensive literature on outdoor adventure activity participants for insights into the character and motives of outdoor adventure tourists. The paper also focuses,secondly, on an original case study of mountaineer tourists in Chamonix, France. Results from the case study of mountaineer tourists are evaluated against the research themes and gaps identified from the review of literature on outdoor adventure activity participants, including outdoor adventure tourists. It is shown how outdoor adventure tourists are a diverse group. Motivational similarities and differences exist between these tourists and their outdoor recreational counterparts. Experience, age and gender influence the motives and motivational differences among outdoor adventure activity participants. It is noted that there is considerable scope for further research on outdoor adventure tourists, including mountaineer tourists, and potential new research directions are identified for the specific themes examined in the paper. Keywords : outdoor adventure tourists; mountaineer tourists; characteristics; motives; motivational decisions</p

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

Boundaries and boundary crossing in tourism: A study of policy work for tourism and urban regeneration

The paper argues for a research focus on understanding varied boundary relations in society, including social, political, geographical and discursive relations. Analytical themes are established for the study of tourism’s boundary relations: the salience and permeability of boundaries, discursive boundaries, power relations associated with boundaries, and learning within and across boundaries. Particular attention is 14 given to concepts of learning: identification, reflection, coordination and transformation. These themes and concepts are employed to explore boundary relations of the tourism and other urban regeneration policy sectors in two city districts. Cross-boundary learning across the tourism and urban regeneration policy sectors occurred through the identification of, and reflection about, tourism's role in urban regeneration and led to coordination and possibly some transformation. Yet this was within significant limitations and barriers. There was perhaps scope for more regular and comprehensive boundary crossing between the tourism and urban regeneration policy sectors

The temporal evolution of tourism institutions

A fuller understanding of tourism processes should include analysis of historical influences, legacies and the sequencing of change. The paper examines the temporal evolution of tourism institutions by employing historical institutionalist and cultural political economy approaches and a process tracing methodology. They are used to study two institutions involved in tourism and environmental management in a protected area. The assessment carefully explores the timing and sequencing of events and interconnections between processes over time. It demonstrates the value of the approaches and methodology, such as by suggesting that path dependence and path creation are not binary categories, but instead are reciprocally intertwined and co-constituting. Both material/social and ideational/discursive processes are also shown as significant for institutional temporal path

Cultural political economy and urban heritage tourism

The paper explains a cultural political economy “framing” for interpreting heritage tourism in urban contexts. Key ideas behind this research perspective are explained and illustrated through discussion of past research studies of urban heritage tourism. It is underpinned by a relational view of the inter-connectedness of societal relations, and an emphasis on taking seriously both the cultural/semiotic and the economic/political in the co-constitution of urban heritage tourism’s social practices and features. A case study of heritage tourism in Nanjing, China considers cultural political economy’s relevance and value, including the distinctive research questions it raises. It reveals, for example, how economic relations in the built environment were related to tourist meaning-making and identities in the cultural/semiotic sphere

Eco-politics beyond the paradigm of sustainability: A conceptual framework and research agenda

This contribution sketches a conceptual framework for the analysis of the post-ecologist era and outlines a research agenda for investigating its politics of unsustainability. The article suggests that this new era and its particular mode of eco-politics necessitate a new environmental sociology. Following a review of some achievements and limitations of the paradigm of sustainability, the concept of post-ecologism is related to existing discourses of the ‘end of nature’, the ‘green backlash’ and the ‘death of environmentalism’. The shifting terrain of eco-politics in the late-modern condition is mapped and an eco-sociological research programme outlined centring on the post-ecologist question: How do advanced modern capitalist consumer democracies try and manage to sustain what is known to be unsustainable

Environmentalism, pre-environmentalism, and public policy

In the last decade, thousands of new grassroots groups have formed to oppose environmental pollution on the basis that it endangers their health. These groups have revitalized the environmental movement and enlarged its membership well beyond the middle class. Scientists, however, have been unable to corroborate these groups' claims that exposure to pollutants has caused their diseases. For policy analysts this situation appears to pose a choice between democracy and science. It needn't. Instead of evaluating the grassroots groups from the perspective of science, it is possible to evaluate science from the perspective of environmentalism. This paper argues that environmental epidemiology reflects ‘pre-environmentalist’ assumptions about nature and that new ideas about nature advanced by the environmental movement could change the way scientists collect and interpret data.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45449/1/11077_2005_Article_BF01006494.pd

Theoretical activity in sustainable tourism research

There is growing recognition in tourism and sustainable tourism research of the need for a fuller engagement in theoretical activity. The paper examines how different research strategies in recent articles on sustainable tourism have advanced theoretical understanding in this research field. The articles advance thinking through ideas and concepts connected with political ecology, mobilities, transition pathways, and behavioural and systems change. They are evaluated using a typology of research strategies associated with theoretical work, using a broad perspective on this work. The research strategy typology was developed for the paper, and it is explained and illustrated. While the papers on sustainable tourism use a range of strategies associated with theoretical activity, there is only limited engagement with "big" social theories

Governance, the state and sustainable tourism: a political economy approach

Collective actions are often needed to promote the objectives of sustainable tourism in destinations. Governance is the basis of these collective actions. This paper contends that research on the governance of tourism and sustainability would benefit from greater use of social theory. It shows how one social theory, a strategic-relational political economy approach, can offer insights into state interventions affecting tourism and sustainability in destinations. The paper uses a literature review and case studies incorporating ideas from this approach to understand the state's influences on tourism and sustainability. Case studies are taken from Germany, China, Malta, Turkey and the UK. A range of distinctive perspectives and themes associated with this approach are assessed. They include the approach's holistic, relational and dialectical perspective, its focus on the state's roles in regulating the economic and political systems, its concern with the interactions between agency and structure, and the adaptation of state activities at different spatial scales and at different times, together with the concepts of path dependence and path creation. These perspectives and themes are directions for future research on governance, the state and sustainable tourism