Does tourism development shift residents’ attitudes to the environment and protected area management?

ABSTRACT

Tourism is commonly introduced or encouraged in rural areas of developing countries to improve local livelihoods and enhance conservation. While understanding resultant shifts in residents’ attitudes are important for effective management, there is scant longitudinal knowledge. This study investigated residents’ attitudes to the environment, protected area management, and tourism through a longitudinal mixed-method study from 2011 to 2020 in an Iranian rural village during early tourism stages. Quantitative and qualitative primary data were collected through surveys of residents, interviews with government officials and the village leader, and observations combined with secondary data collected over the nine-year period. This study specifically tested, and confirmed, that residents’ attitudes to the environment and protected area management must be measured separately. As attitudes to the environment and its management are commonly combined, this is the first study to measure residents’ attitudes to protected area management longitudinally. The findings revealed no significant shift in residents’ attitudes to the environment but a significant positive shift regarding protected area management. Also tested were residents’ attitudes to tourism, which were initially positive and shifted to be more positive. Finally, this study demonstrated significant negative environmental impacts, and an attitude-behaviour gap, which provide theoretical and practical contributions.

KEYWORDS:

• Early-stage tourism
• longitudinal study
• residents’ attitudes
• environment
• conservation
• protected area management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raymond Rastegar

Raymond Rastegar holds a PhD in tourism management and is a lecturer and researcher in Tourism at the UQ Business School, University of Queensland. His research focuses on sustainable tourism development in developing countries with specific interest in local community livelihood, participation, empowerment, and environmental conservation. Recent research projects have investigated the impacts of tourism at local level and delivered new insights into the tourism phenomenon to advocate a more just and sustainable tourism future.

Noreen Breakey

Noreen Breakey holds a PhD in tourism destination development and is a lecturer and researcher in Tourism at the UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Australia. Her research explores the relationships between people, tourism and the natural environment, through her principal research areas of environmental ethics, sustainable tourism, ecotourism, community-based tourism, and tourism in protected areas. Prior to her academic career, Noreen worked for over a decade in industry, including hotels, resorts, tour operations, travel agencies, and events in Australia and overseas, as well as in government, as the Corporate Planning Analyst at Tourism Events Queensland.

Sally Driml

Sally Driml holds a PhD in environmental economics and is a lecturer and researcher in Tourism at the UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Australia. She is currently applying her economic skills to research on tourism issues, including tourism in protected areas. She has published research on economic values of visitor use of protected areas including Australian World Heritage Areas, the Great Barrier Reef, the Wet Tropics WHA and Queensland National Parks. Prior to joining the University of Queensland, Sally had extensive experience in working in government in economic analysis, environmental policy development and tourism planning and development for destinations and communities.

Lisa Ruhanen

Lisa Ruhanen (PhD, GCEd, BBusHons) is a Professor and the Director of Education at University of Queensland Business School. She has been involved in almost 30 academic and consultancy research projects in Australia and overseas. Her research areas include sustainable tourism destination policy and planning, climate change and Indigenous tourism.