Esta pesquisa objetivou analisar o estado da arte do turismo na região do Jalapão, estado do Tocantins. O Jalapão está, hoje, entre os mais divulgados destinos de ecoturismo no país, correspondendo o mesmo à uma região onde predomina o ecossistema cerrado (boa parte desse, protegido por unidades de conservação). Para tanto, foram analisadas políticas públicas federais incidentes sobre o território regional bem como ações emanadas do governo do estado do Tocantins. A partir da pesquisa de gabinete, que se somou ao trabalho de campo realizado em julho de 2005, construímos uma reflexão crítica sobre o lugar do (eco)turismo na organização do espaço regional do Jalapão. A dissertação está estruturada em três capítulos, abordando políticas territoriais e o lugar do turismo (apresentando um histórico das políticas de turismo no país e uma análise de dois programa federais: O Proecotur e o Programa de Regionalização do Turismo), a história de formação do estado do Tocantins, características gerais e suas políticas de turismo e ambiental (focando a convergência entre as áreas de conservação e as regiões priorizadas para uso turístico) e por fim, uma análise sobre a região do Jalapão e sua valorização pelo e para o turismo, e que tipo de transformações espaciais (embora ainda incipientes) se originaram e, possivelmente, se originarão devido às ações dos poderes públicos com vistas a promover a realização da prática do turismo na região estudada. / The objective of this present work was to analyze the state-of-the-art of tourism in the region of Jalapão, located in the Tocantins state. Nowadays, Tocantins state is one of the most disclosed ecotourism spots in the country, corresponding to the region where the savannah (\"cerrado\") ecosystem predominates (a portion of it is protected by conservation areas). To reach the objective we analyzed federal public policies about the regional territory as well as actions taken by the Tocantins state government. Based on office researches and field work, done in July 2005, weve built a critical analysis about the role of (eco)tourism in the arrangement of the territory in the region of Jalapão. This dissertation is structured around three chapters, dealing with territorial policies and the tourism place (presenting a tourism public policies in the country history and an analysis of two federal programs: Proecotur and Programa de Regionalização do Turismo), the history of formation of the Tocantins state, general characteristics ans its tourism and environmental policies (focusing on the convergence among the preservation areas end the regions that are a priority for the tourism usage), and at last, an analysis about the Jalapão region and its importance to and because of the tourism, and wht kind of spatial transformations (although still in the beginning) were originated an, probably, will originate because of the public powers actions aiming to promote the realization of the tourism practice in the region studied above.

Human-wildlife conflicts around protected areas are important issues affecting conservation, especially in Africa. In Gabon, this conflict revolves around crop-raiding by protected wildlife, especially elephants. Elephants’ crop-raiding threaten livelihoods and undermines conservation efforts. Gabon is currently using monetary compensation and electric fences to address this human-elephant conflict. This thesis compares the impacts of the human-elephant conflict in Pongara and Ivindo National Parks based on their idiosyncrasy. Information was gathered through systematic review of available literature and publications, observation, and semi-structured face to face interviews with local residents, park employees, and experts from the National Park Agency. This thesis argues that the impacts of human-elephant conflict are more severe in Ivindo compared to Pongara National Park due to their specific characteristics. To effectively address this human-elephant conflict, an adaptive management strategy is needed. This adaptive management strategy should integrate conservation, livelihood security, and combine to the specific characteristics of each park.

Since the late 20th century, nature-based tourism, an alternative to mass tourism with a focus on natural environments, has steadily grown in popularity. Nature-based tourism areas are considered a platform for informal education and exemplify principles of environmental stewardship and conservation. Iceland, an island nation in the North Atlantic, is one area of the world that has seen dramatic growth in its nature-based tourism industry in recent years; tourists are drawn to Iceland in numbers five times the total population of the Country. The pressures of economic development have resulted in the continued promotion of Icelandic tourism, and, subsequently, the rapid, sometimes detrimental, development of tourist destinations. This study used a triangulated mixed methods approach including post-visitation assessments, mobile eye-tracking (MET), GPS footpath collection, and observational analysis to assess visitor experience and behavior in two popular Icelandic tourist destinations: Sólheimajökull and Þingvellir. Through the use of MET, a greater understanding of visitor behavior was developed in these areas. Results suggest that the infrastructure development which has occurred at Þingvellir is effective at managing tourist behavior; however, the less developed and more authentic environment of Sólheimajökull appeals more to visitor expectations of Icelandic tourism. Observing the strengths and weaknesses of the study sites revealed ways to guide the future development of the sites in ways that promote both education and conservation. Furthermore, the critical evaluation of the original methodology developed for this study also presents a technique by which the development of other nature-based tourism destinations can be assessed.

The literature suggests that a correlation exists between visitor satisfaction and a visitor's choice to re-experience a product. The higher one's satisfaction level, the more likely he/she is to experience the product again and/or provide positive word-of-mouth advertising to friends and family. The Tian-Cole and Crompton model was chosen because of its acknowledgment and explanation of the differences between Visitor Satisfaction (VS) and Service Quality (SQ) and how their relationship influences satisfaction and contributes to Future Destination Selection. In addition to identifying a theoretical framework that explains why visitors return, it was necessary to identify a survey methodology to be used in developing the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve (MPRFR) visitor satisfaction surveys. It was determined that a combination of the Relative Performance Assessment (RPA) and Customer Service Questionnaire (CSQ) was an appropriate survey framework for a visitor satisfaction survey. As a result of the research, two visitor satisfaction surveys were developed: Intercept Survey and Mail-back Survey. The Intercept Survey will be administered at a MPRFR site. It was designed to be concise and not take much of the visitor's time. This survey will be used to gather general information about visitor characteristics and level of satisfaction while at a site. The Mail-back Survey will be sent to the visitor after their trip so more time can be devoted to answering a more detailed visitor satisfaction survey. This survey asks visitors to indicate what site characteristics are important to them and then rate their satisfaction with each item. Instruments from the report entitled "A Front Country Visitor Study for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument" were used as an example of how to format a visitor satisfaction survey and how to use the collected data as a managerial tool. The two main objectives of this research were accomplished and have established a foundation upon which subsequent research efforts will begin. This work serves as a catalyst to improving Belizean site planning, design, and management by better understanding what site characteristics contribute to visitor satisfaction.

This thesis examines the implementation of tourism strategies in a rural community context. Applying public policy implementation theory to tourism research, this study investigates questions related to connections and collaborations between stakeholders, decision-making and inducing action and the relation between objectives in a strategy document and actual outcomes of a policy process. Two tourism planning strategies in rural peripheral communities of New Zealand�s South Island are investigated adopting a case study approach. While these strategies have in common their geographical and content foci, they differ in terms of commissioning agencies, stakeholder and community involvement, age, resource allocation and planning and implementation approaches. The strategies are four and eleven years old. One is a top-down strategy by a government agency, the other is the result of a community bottom-up process. Using a pragmatic methodical approach and applying a framework that incorporates the implementation environment including stakeholders and decisive events during strategy making, this research assesses the two cases individually and comparatively. Thus applying a non-linear framework and examining strategies that allow for an investigation of longer implementation timeframes, this study overcomes long-standing issues in this type of research. It fills a gap in the literature as it is the first comprehensive analysis of tourism plan implementation to employ public policy implementation theory in one coherent case study approach. The methods applied in this study include semi-structured interviews as well as content analysis of strategy and policy documents, internal documents such as minutes of meetings and newspaper articles. Starting with strategy makers and �key implementers�, a snowballing process was used to identify further interviewees and to also follow the policy process as perceived by the main actors in it. This combination of methods allowed for a discovery of the policy story; it assisted a process-oriented investigation of tourism plan implementation while at the same time providing factual information and verifying stakeholder statements through triangulating interview results with the content analysis of documents. Overall, for both the top-down and the bottom-up planning case, implementation was found to be dynamic and highly dependent on the actors at the grassroots level. Many critical stakeholders are volunteer community members who have little or no experience in tourism planning. Most actors are tourism operators or are otherwise involved with the industry. However, as some actors are not actively involved in the tourism industry but represent interests related to the protection of the social and natural environment, their views and actions have the potential to be anti-tourism development and therefore they evoke conflict. The two planning approaches do not differ significantly in terms of bureaucratic control and political guidance. Institutions such as, for example, district councils or economic development agencies, mainly impact on the availability of resources to plan and implement strategy goals. Whether or not goals are achieved therefore ultimately depends on the commitment and interest of all stakeholders involved. Other important factors for policy success are the stability of stakeholder relationships and the level of information and knowledge held by those stakeholders, particularly in situations where there is little support from agencies. This is evident where a stakeholder�s previous experience in community work and relevant know-how is considered an asset among the volunteers who are responsible for many of the projects. The potential for conflict and the necessity for implementers to �make do� with the funding, knowledge and information they have, accounts for high volatility of priorities and goals during implementation. Key findings that relate to both the tourism planning and the public policy literature refer to the similarities of implementation processes for top-down and bottom-up strategies at a grassroots level, the significant role and decisive influence that inexperienced volunteer implementers have in such settings and the high degree to which policy change takes place during such processes.

In the last few decades, “ecotourism” has emerged as a much talked about topic that is frequently linked to the term “sustainable development”. Despite the fact that the definition of ecotourism has been expanded from primarily pristine nature-based areas to modified areas, relatively few studies have been devoted to evaluating the relationship between “ecotourism” and “sustainable development” in those destinations. To address this research need, this thesis attempts to analyse the potential of ecotourism as a strategy for sustainable development, where it does not depend only on nature-based opportunities. Relevant literature on the topics of ecotourism and sustainable development was examined to develop a framework to assess ecotourism in a case study area. The case study employed was Tengtou village, China, which is one of the earliest national eco-villages. Tengtou hosted 76,200 tourists in 2006. Data was collected using qualitative methods, which included semi-structured interviews, informal discussions, focus groups, participant observation and questionnaire surveys. The research revealed that ecotourism has brought a variety of favourable impacts, and the local people hold optimistic attitudes about ecotourism, which indicate the feasibility of the ecotourism industry and the comparative success it has achieved. On the other hand, the research also found several potentially adverse effects, which suggest that ecotourism does not yet make a full contribution to local sustainable development. This thesis concludes that effective regulation and sound planning play a significant role in enabling the sustainability of ecotourism. Meanwhile, the importance of local people’s active involvement at different levels of ecotourism development in ensuring ecotourism’s success, in the long term, was also revealed. This issue of local participation, strongly pushed in the international ecotourism literature, is not something which has characterised most ecotourism initiatives in China to date. Further, considering the increasing number of tourists, the management of tourists and the expansion of physical infrastructure need to be strengthened in the research area.

Shan-Mei, a Tsou aboriginal village in Taiwan, is widely known as a legend of environmental conservation, where ecotourism has been successfully combined with integrated community development. Indigenous knowledge containing "ecological wisdom" and decision-making based on consensus are perceived to be the greatest contributors to this achievement. I conducted three months of fieldwork in Shan-Mei, primarily using the methods of participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The purpose of this study was to reexamine the ecotourism and community development in Shan-Mei. I found that the ecotourism project is ecologically based, but not ecologically sound. With a combination of nature-based tourism and ethnic tourism, and later expansion into mass tourism, Shan-Mei's ecotourism project yielded negative environmental impacts. The unplanned development of mass tourism especially brought overcrowding that endangered a fragile fish species and the surrounding ecosystem. Lack of education about environmental issues created misperceptions among tourists and local people about the role of conservation in ecotourism. The community also faced problems of inappropriate government intervention, declining local participation in the project, and internal conflicts of interest. There was a need for better training and implementation of the interpretive program, professional assistance by outside experts for environmental assessment and planning, and better protection for indigenous rights in the laws of the nation state. This case illustrates that ecologically sound ecotourism not only requires indigenous knowledge but also expertise and legal protection that recognizes local autonomy. Despite the shortcomings, the Shan-Mei community was found to be proactive in creating a better future for its residents. The community used the revenue from ecotourism and government aid to establish its own social welfare program, fund various projects to revive traditional culture, assist agricultural development, and improve everyone's quality of life. The community benefited from ecotourism and community development in terms of inventing a hybrid Shan-Mei culture and forming a stronger sense of identity and autonomy. Shan-Mei provides invaluable lessons in its experience with ecotourism in its strategic adaptation to modernization. / Graduation date: 2002

The Mark 0. Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC) public education opportunities include interpretive programs offered along the Estuary Nature Trail. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of three informal education programs, interpretive signs, a self-guided trail brochure, and guided naturalist walks, in imparting information on the ecology of estuaries to visitors. A second objective was to determine visitors attitudes towards estuarine and wetland conservation issues. A questionnaire including knowledge and attitude statements and demographics was distributed to 901 participants. Results show that the three programs are effective in teaching visitors about estuarine ecology, with the naturalist walks being the most effective. Knowledge of estuarine ecology and attitudes towards estuarine and wetland conservation issues were associated with visitor characteristics such as level of education, membership in a conservation organization, residence proximity to wetlands, awareness of local wetland controversies, and previous visits to an estuary trail. Observations of visitor behavior along the estuary trail showed that visitor groups spent an average of 16 minutes on the trail. At each interpretive sign between 54 and 77% of the visitors were observed reading the information; those reading times ranged from 16 to 33 seconds per sign. / Graduation date: 1994

This study examined the role volunteer tourism played in the conservation of elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand. A case study was conducted to determine whether volunteer tourism at the Elephant Nature Park (ENP) had an effect on elephant conservation. Specifically, this study looked at how volunteer tourism and the ENP had an impact on: non-volunteer tourists, elephants, the local economy, and government policy. Mixed methods were used to attain the data in this study. Self-administered questionnaires were created to determine the impact volunteer tourism had on non-volunteer tourists. Results showed an increase in non-volunteer tourists’ awareness of elephant tourism, volunteer tourism and elephant conservation during the time they spent at the park. Self-administered questionnaires were also used to determine whether members of the local community felt they were receiving economic or social benefits from volunteer tourism and the ENP. The data showed that community participants felt they were receiving both economic and social benefits but their responses varied depending on sex, age, and how long they had lived in the region. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted to determine the role the ENP had on the conservation of elephants in Thailand and government policy. Interviewees consisted of experts in the industry who were knowledgeable about elephant tourism, volunteer tourism, and the ENP. The data indicated that the ENP created awareness about elephant conservation issues with non-volunteer tourists, volunteers, the community, and government officials. However, the ENP did not have any measureable effect on government policy. The model of volunteer tourism utilized by the Elephant Nature Park has been shown to be effective in conserving the domestic elephant and in creating awareness about domestic elephant conservation issues in Thailand.

This study examined the role volunteer tourism played in the conservation of elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand. A case study was conducted to determine whether volunteer tourism at the Elephant Nature Park (ENP) had an effect on elephant conservation. Specifically, this study looked at how volunteer tourism and the ENP had an impact on: non-volunteer tourists, elephants, the local economy, and government policy. Mixed methods were used to attain the data in this study. Self-administered questionnaires were created to determine the impact volunteer tourism had on non-volunteer tourists. Results showed an increase in non-volunteer tourists’ awareness of elephant tourism, volunteer tourism and elephant conservation during the time they spent at the park. Self-administered questionnaires were also used to determine whether members of the local community felt they were receiving economic or social benefits from volunteer tourism and the ENP. The data showed that community participants felt they were receiving both economic and social benefits but their responses varied depending on sex, age, and how long they had lived in the region. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted to determine the role the ENP had on the conservation of elephants in Thailand and government policy. Interviewees consisted of experts in the industry who were knowledgeable about elephant tourism, volunteer tourism, and the ENP. The data indicated that the ENP created awareness about elephant conservation issues with non-volunteer tourists, volunteers, the community, and government officials. However, the ENP did not have any measureable effect on government policy. The model of volunteer tourism utilized by the Elephant Nature Park has been shown to be effective in conserving the domestic elephant and in creating awareness about domestic elephant conservation issues in Thailand.