Tourism is the fastest growing sector in the world. It represents 10% of the global GDP and generates one in 11 jobs. Nature tourism has become increasingly popular in the last few decades and it is predicted to keep increasing. Wildlife watching has initially been welcomed by conservation and environmental organisations as a conservation tool. However, we now know that these activities can have severe consequences for the environment and for the local communities. In this thesis, I have provided advice on the governance approaches and management tools that can be used to facilitate sustainable outcomes of nature tourism socioecological systems. First, I used semi-quantitative models to investigate nature tourism systems' dynamics under perturbations and the properties that confer resilience to the system, as well as leading to sustainable outcomes. Then, after validating the use of social media data to quantify nature tourism activities in Scotland, I used it to identify the major drivers of intensity of nature tourism on a national scale. I then obtained a global picture of nature tourism and its role in helping countries to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In the end, I designed an individual-based model to test how different tourists' phenotypes influence the sustainability of a nature tourism destination and whether any governance regime could be effective in maintaining sustainable socioeconomic and ecological dynamics. This work will be useful to inform management of local, national and global scale governance of nature tourism. Caution is needed when promoting the expansion of a country's tourism sector before determining how to manage it sustainably. Scotland has already developed some of the governance institutions that could contribute to sustainable governance of nature tourism. What is needed now is designing flexible rules and institutions that will be able to adapt to future changes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:767353 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Mancini, Francesca |
| Contributors | Lusseau, David. ; Coghill, George M. ; Leyshon, Ben ; Manson, Fiona |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=240416 |
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