The growth of Chinese tourism to Antarctica: a profile of their connectedness to nature, motivations, and perceptions

Antarctica emerged as a tourism destination only some 50 years ago, the annual number of visitors has increased and the nationalities of visitors have shifted over the years with an increasing number of visitors from the People’s Republic of China. However, there is a lack of empirical studies on Chinese visitors’ motivations and perceptions of their Antarctic visits. This study reports on a preliminary investigation of the reasons why Chinese visit Antarctica, their post-visiting perceptions of the region and their potential anthropogenic impacts on the Antarctic environment. The study is based on data collected from 120 passengers who travelled on two Antarctic voyages on fully Chinese chartered cruises during the 2017/18 Antarctic season. The results show that curiosity about Antarctica is the major motivation for tourists from China to visit Antarctica. The majority of respondents indicated a sense of commitment to the protection of Antarctica after their Antarctic visit but because citizens of mainland China may have a different understanding of environmental protection. The close supervision and guiding during their shore visits are recommended

We may not know much about the deep sea, but do we care about mining it?

1. The way we value the environment affects how we treat it. While public awareness of human impacts on the ocean is increasing, industrial activities in the deep sea are accelerating rapidly and out of sight. 2. The underlying values we hold for the environment were increasingly recognised as an important factor in environmental decision-making, and it was thus important to evaluate public values towards deep-sea environments. 3. Here, we explored people's care for the deep sea and related this to the perceived risks of seafloor mining by comparing the deep sea to three other remote environments: Antarctica, remote terrestrial environments and the Moon. 4. We conducted an online survey to investigate symbolic values, which we define as the emotions, moods and meanings an environment evokes, as an element affecting people's care for the environment. In addition, we investigated the respondent's knowledge, worldviews and the perceived environmental and societal risk of mining in these four environments. 5. We found that symbolic values shape people's environmental care and that the overall symbolic value attributed to each of the environments differs. 6. People perceived it likely that mining will take place in the deep sea, and the majority of respondents (81%) stated to care a lot or very much about human activities harming the deep sea. 7. In comparison to the other remote environments, in a general sense people cared less about the deep sea, and their self-assessed knowledge of the deep sea was lower. 8. These results suggest that it was fundamental to account for the underlying values and emotions towards the environment when evaluating the risks of human activities in remote settings. 9. Our results further highlighted the need to improve public understanding and connection with the deep sea and its role within wider society to engender deep-sea stewardship.Peer reviewe