Understanding communities’ views of nature in rural industry renewal: the transition from forestry to nature-based tourism in Eden, Australia

Abstract

This scoping paper examines the complex issue of assessing and understanding community views about the restructuring towards nature-based rural tourism of traditional agriculture and forestry rural economies and their activities that had hitherto shaped local identities. It shows how individual resident perceptions can be included within social impact assessment through the use of psychological methods and discusses the relative merits of using personal construct theory -based repertory grids. Ten repertory grid interviews were completed in Eden, New South Wales, Australia. The findings present both the resulting repertory grids and a more detailed discussion of the interpretation of the grids through two narratives that focus on residents considering what, in their opinion, constitutes a sustainable utilisation of local forest land. The discussion examines how the results of this type of analysis can be used to understand individual residents’ decisions to support or reject nature-based tourism proposals in favour of traditional extractive forest-industry sectors. It shows how this assessment system could aid planners in reconciling stakeholder conflict over the ideal usage of public forest land by offering a structured means of giving heterogeneous rural communities a formal voice in tourism-planning processes.

理解社区居民对乡村产业复苏中自然的看法：以澳大利亚Eden为例讨论从以林业为基准向以自然为基准的旅游转变

该文章探讨了一些复杂的问题，评估和理解社区看法关于至今形成当地身份象征的传统农业和林业乡村经济和相关活动重组为以自然为基准的乡村旅游。文章显示个体居民的看法是可以通过心理方法的使用和讨论使用个人建设理论的相关好处来被包括到社会影响的评估。作者在澳大利亚新南威尔士的Eden完成了十个个人构念积储格的面试。结论性显示了相关的个人构念积储格和积储格解释的详细讨论。该讨论是通过两个叙述例子，着重于居民如何考虑什么能组成当地森林用地的可持续性利用。讨论检测了这种分析的结果能被用来理解每个居民的决定，关于和传统林业相比，对以自然为基准的旅游建议书支持与否。文章显示这个评估系统如何帮助规划者通过给不同乡村社区居民在旅游规划过程的正式发表意见的结构化方式，调解利益相关者对使用公共森林用地产生的冲突。

Keywords:

• nature-based tourism
• personal construct theory
• community conflict
• repertory grid analysis

Keywords:

• 以自然为基准的旅游
• 个人建设理论
• 社区冲突
• 个人构念积储格分析方法

Notes

1. These terms are used in Australia to indicate people from cities moving to rural areas seeking new lifestyles and opportunities within either coastal regions (sea-changers) or inland regions (tree-changers).