Unethical use of wildlife in tourism: what's the problem, who is responsible, and what can be done?

ABSTRACT

Wildlife tourism is a huge global market, the revenue from which can promote local livelihoods and tourist education, enact conservation, and improve animal welfare. Such benefits arise if wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs) prioritise ethical deliverables above financial profit, but recent work has shown that the majority of WTAs have substantial negative animal welfare and conservation impacts. In the absence of global regulatory authorities, tourist revenue has become the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes acceptable use of animals in WTAs. Tourists, however, are not adequate assessors of WTAs’ animal welfare and conservation impacts: they lack the specialist knowledge required and are subject to a number of psychological biases that obscure the ethical dimensions of decisions to attend particular WTAs. This inadequacy is evidenced, and compounded, by overwhelmingly positive reviews on TripAdvisor (the industry-leading review site), even for WTAs with objectively poor ethical standards. Our suggested solution is to empower tourists by presenting unequivocal assessments of WTAs' animal welfare and conservation impacts, hosted in the fora that tourists already use to make their travel decisions. We would thereby promote a subjective norm that tourists should consider and limit their individual negative impacts when choosing which WTAs to visit.

KEYWORDS:

• Wildlife tourist attraction
• regulation
• animal welfare
• conservation
• attitude-behaviour gap
• TripAdvisor

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for early conversations with Professor Peter Ayton and Dr Angeliki Kerasidou, which were helpful in the writing of the “Ethical Blindspots” section.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from World Animal Protection.

Notes on contributors

Tom Moorhouse

Dr Tom Moorhouse is a post-doctoral researcher at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford. His background is in landscape, behavioural, and invasive species ecology, with projects ranging from experimental water vole reintroductions to mitigating the impacts of invasive signal crayfish in the UK. His current research focuses on the global impacts of human recreational use of wildlife, with recent publications comprising the first global audit of the animal welfare and conservation impacts of wildlife tourist attractions, and research into how providing information to may reduce consumer demand for exotic pets.

Neil C. D'Cruze

Dr Neil D'Cruze is head of Wildlife Research and Policy at World Animal Protection, UK, and a visiting academic at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford. His research interests include a range of subjects, including wildlife trade and human-wildlife conflict, and have resulted in improvements to the welfare and conservation status of a wide range of species including Sloth bears in India, African elephants in Tanzania, Brown bears in Turkey, Asian palm civets in Indonesia, and Green sea turtles in the Caribbean.

David W. Macdonald

Professor David Macdonald, CBE, DSc, FRSE, is the Director and founder of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford. His scientific background is in behavioural ecology, with an emphasis on carnivores, although his published research includes studies on organisms from moths to penguins and even, occasionally, plants. His recent awards include the 2005 Dawkins Prize for Conservation and Animal Welfare; the 2006 American Society of Mammalogists’ Merriam Prize for research in mammalogy; the 2007 The Mammal Society of Great Britain's gold medal for research in mammalogy; and in 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.