Overseas tourists negotiating risk at Australian beaches

Abstract

Beachgoing experiences are highly desirable among international tourists visiting Australia. Beach use has been popularised in the contemporary Australian imaginary influencing how locals behave at the beach and setting an example to visitors. Many of the behaviours that Australian beach users’ display can be classed as risky. How and why tourists enact certain risky behaviours in their attempts to comply with beach going norms in Australia is not well known. The imagined beachgoing psyche of tourists describes a disconnection between pre-conceptions about risk at the beach and the reality of actual risks and hazards. The pursuit of thrill and risk while on holiday work to reconcile tourist attitudes about their often safety-averse behaviours, helping to explain why beach safety is often ignored, accidentally and purposefully. The influence of other social phenomena, such as the amplification of risk, interactive risk and group norms, contribute to tourists’ beach behaviours in Australia. Beachgoer questionnaires and interview testimonies triangulated results using a mixed-method-research approach that identifies the mechanisms that lead to an incoherence between understandings of danger and safe behaviours, which were specific to the socio-spatial context of the Australian beach space. There is much ambiguity in the nature of the Australian beach holiday, where the tourist beachgoer can choose between behaviours of escape (to relax) and excite (to take risks). This can lead to the conflation of these contrasting, yet spatially connected, pursuits.

摘要

到澳大利亚旅游的国际游客非常希望有海滩旅游的经历。海滩的使用在当代澳大利亚人的想象中得到了普及, 影响着当地人在海滩上的行为, 为游客树立了榜样。澳大利亚海滩使用者展示的许多行为可以被归为危险行为。在澳大利亚, 游客在试图遵守海滩旅游规范时如何以及为什么会做出某些冒险行为, 这一点并不为人所知。游客想象中的海滩游心理描述了对海滩风险的先入之见与实际风险和危险之间的脱节。在度假工作中追求刺激和冒险, 以调和游客对他们往往厌恶安全的行为的态度, 这有助于解释为什么海滩安全经常被有意无意地忽视。其他社会现象的影响, 如风险的放大、互动风险、群体规范等, 也促成了游客在澳大利亚的海滩行为。本文使用混合方法对海滩游客调查问卷和访谈证词结果进行三角分析, 该方法确定了导致对危险和安全行为理解不一致的机制, 而这种不一致是澳大利亚海滩空间的社会空间环境下所独有的。澳大利亚海滩度假的性质很模糊, 游客可以在逃避(放松)和兴奋(冒险)两种行为之间做出选择。这可能导致这些对比鲜明而在空间上又相互关联的行为的融合。

Keywords:

• Beach
• Australia
• tourists
• hazards
• risk
• edgework

关键词:

• 海滩
• 澳大利亚
• 游客
• 危险
• 风险
• 边缘工作

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 There were 262 deaths as a result of rip currents in Australia between 2004 and 2018 (SLSA, 2018).

2 Sunburn is responsible for 99% of skin cancers in Australia with beach use strongly associated with over 2000 cancer-related deaths each year (Cancer Council Australia, 2019).

3 Chain surfing involves holding onto a fixed object – usually a metal chain portion that surrounds headland rock pools in Australia – to resist being forced back by incoming waves. Chain surfing commonly occurs during storms or large wave events.

4 http://www.myuv.com.au/sunsound/ (site accessed 10/05/19).

5 www.sunburnalert.com (site accessed 10/05/19).

6 Media outlets often refer to Australia’s beaches as pristine alongside their potential for hazards (Waitt, 1997), see for instance: https://www.aol.co.uk/2017/01/20/worlds-most-dangerous-beach-mexico-australia-UK/ or https://www.dmarge.com/2016/12/dangerous-places-to-swim.html.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Todd R. Walton

Todd Walton is a research fellow with the Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous office at UNSW. He investigates inequity within higher education while maintaining research interests in human and cultural geography.

Wendy S. Shaw

Wendy Shaw's research interests include whiteness in postcolonial Australia and Indigenous geographies; theoretical debates about identity, specifically concerning urbanism and urbanity, gentrification and cosmopolitanism, and the complex realities of (post)colonial urban life in Australia, and beyond.