Wildlife-Based Tourism and Increased Support for Nature Conservation Financially and otherwise: Evidence from Sea Turtle Ecotourism at Mon Repos

By C. Tisdell, Clevo Wilson. 2001

123 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The arguments of most conservationists supporting ecotourism have been based on the view that it is environmentally friendly as a resource-use and that receipts from it can counter demands to use the natural resources involved for more extractive economic purposes. But wildlife-based ecotourism can also have positive impacts in itself on the willingness of tourists to pay for wildlife conservation, strengthen the pro-conservation attitudes of tourists, and foster personal actions by them that contribute to wildlife conservation. These aspects are explored in this article on the basis of a survey of tourists visiting Mon Repos Beach near Bundaberg, Queensland, for the purpose of watching marine turtles. The results enable several of the conservation impacts of this experience on tourists to be quantified, and highlight important relationships between specific socio-economic variables and the willingness of tourists to pay for the protection of sea turtles. Furthermore, it is shown that the on-site experiences of ecotourists have positive impacts on the willingness of tourists to pay for the conservation of wildlife, and that willingness to pay is sensitive to whether or not wildlife is seen. It is suggested that in situ ecotourism is likely to be a more powerful force for fostering pro-conservation attitudes and actions among visitors than ex situ wildlife-based tourism in aquaria and zoos.

Subfields: Ecology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9cbb3c7e7d4ae038610d0c76a3427f3b7d19b23a

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Citations in the corpus

Management strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change on sea turtle’s terrestrial reproductive phase (2011, unknown): “1982; Moran and Bjorndal 2005)), are highly valuable to tourism industries (Clem and Clevo 2001; Wilson and Tisdell 2001), and have great spiritual and social importance to indigenous communities (Johannes and Mcfarlane 1991; Morgan 2007).”
Biological effects, conservation potential, and research priorities of shark diving tourism. (2015, background): “In addition to the direct and indirect expenditures of shark tourists, evidence suggests that tourists are more willing to pay to support the conservation of species they have encountered (Tisdell and Wilson, 2001).”
Consequences of brown bear viewing tourism : A review (2017, background): “However, seeing wild animals and having first hand experiences with wildlife may have positive effects on pro-conservation behaviour (Tisdell and Wilson, 2001).”