Ecotourism aims to involve low-impact travel to fragile natural areas that emphasizes experiencing flora, fauna, and culture. It strives to educate visitors about their environmental impact and support conservation efforts while benefiting local communities. However, ecotourism faces challenges regarding who it prioritizes and how its goals are decided. The researcher argues ecotourism should enlighten individuals by teaching children about interconnectedness. Exposure to natural and cultural areas may "convert" people with low environmental ethics into conservation supporters. The researcher hypothesizes tourists who visit eco-cultural attractions before leisure activities in an area will demonstrate more responsible behavior there in the future. A study found this hypothesis was supported, with some tourists expressing

1. BABU P GEORGE, PhD
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Ecotourism
OVERCOMING THE LIFECYCLE OF A FAD

2. Why are we here??

7. Ecotourism is ‘claimed’ to involve -

travel to fragile, pristine, and usually protected areas that strives to be low
impact and (often) small scale

typically involves travel to destinations where flora, fauna, and cultural heritage
are the primary attractions

a conceptual experience, enriching those who delve into understanding the
environment around them

gives visitors an insight into their impact as human beings and also a greater
appreciation of natural habitats

provides funds for conservation

directly benefits the economic development and political empowerment of
local communities

fosters respect for different cultures and for human rights.
7

8. Problems: Unclear Primary Focus

For whom should ecotourism primarily be?


Residents, tourists, governments, or humanity in general?
Who decides the priorities and what are their ‘vested’ interests?

9. Solution: A Paradigmatic Shift

Enlightening individuals, yes, i.e., ourselves!

Make our children see the interconnectedness of everything

Make them see that big picture, even when they ‘grow up into their
narrowed cocoons of existence’.

Our small existences and our big purposes

10. My Recent Research on EcoCultural Tourism

11. What the literature says: I

Eco-cultural tourism is a form of tourism wherein the ecological and cultural
aspects of a landscape are combined to create a site for tourists (Wallace and
Russell, 2004).

Eco-cultural tourism is a community friendly business and is socioculturally, economically, and environmentally sustainable (Butler and
Hinch, 2007).

Eco-cultural tourism attracts especially those individuals who hold strong
humanitarian and environmental values (Berendse and Roessingh, 2007).

More remarkably, eco-cultural tourism is a powerful force of ‘conversion’: The
stay in a natural-cultural area itself is sufficient to raise environmental concern
and conservation ethic to some extent.

Properly implemented, an exposure like this has the potential to convert
individuals with low humanitarian and environmental ethic to the apostles of
these values (Grossberg, Treves, and Naughton-Treves, 2003).

12. What the literature says: II

Leisure tourists, on the other hand, are known to be ‘mass tourists’
who consider that they have the right to be
intrusive, exploitative, and destructive (Watson and
Kopachevsky, 1994).

In fact, most leisure attractions are designed with a view to trigger and
amplify the self-driven, hyper-consumptive behavior of tourists.

Most leisure tourism products are accompanied by discounts or
extra services designed to stimulate consumption (Wong and
Yeh, 2009).

Leisure tourism demand is found to be more sensitive to price and
they tend to value experiences in terms of the single yardstick of
‘value for money’: they seem to hold that they have the right to
exploit since they have paid for it (Divisekera, 2010).

13. YES, I am onto something here!

Environment conditions a person’s attitude and behavior
(Pearce, 2009).

Greater restorative effects arise from experiencing nature and culture
than from the experience of leisure oriented manmade settings, notes
Hartig, Mang, and Evans (1991).

Many environmental problems can be traced to maladaptive human
behavior, observes Skogen (1999).

Understanding the dynamics of conditioning is important for tourism
practice:

For instance, tourists conditioned by a soul soothing environment in the
beginning of a trip may continue to exhibit more constructive thoughts and
actions during the rest of that trip.

Attracting such tourists holds the key to the sustainable development of
destinations, too.

14. My Hypothesis

Tourists who visit attractions of eco-cultural importance in a
destination area prior to visiting leisure attractions within the same
destination area tend to demonstrate elevated levels of responsible
behavior.

15. Findings

In general, hypothesis is not refuted

The responses indicate that tourists who visited attractions of ecocultural importance in a destination area during the final segment of
their previous visit would behave more responsibly when they revisit
leisure attractions in the same destination area in the future.

Some of the qualitative comments that we received in response to an
open-ended question on their overall feelings indicated guilt and
repentance: many of the respondents wondered why they did not
know the ‘real’ place until they reached the last segment of the trip.

Some respondents wondered if there was a hidden agenda behind the
industry not keen on showing tourists the unique eco-cultural heritage of
Goa (where the study was conducted), beyond beaches, bars, and
nightlife.

When the data set was divided into two groups of domestic and
international tourists, we could see that the proposed relationship was
much weaker for the domestic tourist group.

16. Questions & Comments!