In The Gambia, as in many other African countries, rural areas rarely profit from the turnover earned in the country's tourism sector. In academic and political literature, however, rural tourism is ...frequently identified as a diversification strategy that may trigger local economic development in remote communities. To promote rural tourism development, further knowledge is required to understand why tourists are motivated to engage in distinct tourism market segments. In this study, survey data was collected from 450 tourists in The Gambia using a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was constructed to identify the key characteristics and motivations of tourists so that the significant market segments could be categorized and the (latent) tourist demand for rural tourism activities could be gauged. This study identified four distinct segments of tourists in The Gambia: heritage & nature seekers, multi-experiences seekers, multi-experiences & beach seekers, and sun & beach seekers. Drawing on our key findings, we conclude by identifying a development path that could diversify Gambia's tourism sector. The development path would also include event-based rural tourism initiatives that align with the motivations of the identified market segments and may additionally benefit rural communities by reducing economic leakage rates.
•We conduct a survey of 430 tourists in The Gambia to find out about market potential for rural tourism.•We employ a combined factor-clustering method to extract distinct market segments for tourism activities in The Gambia.•We find four distinct market segments.•There is high (latent) market potential for rural tourism businesses in The Gambia.•We sketch out a ‘development path’ on how an event-based rural tourism can actually be implemented.
The paper analyses the effectiveness of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) in sensitive alpine environments by studying processes and selected case studies in Austria and Germany. The ...framework used to evaluate the respective effectiveness is based on four dimensions of effectiveness: procedural, substantive, transactive and normative. The study is based on semi-structured interviews, workshops with key stakeholders and textual analysis of EIA documents, as well as the analysis of legal documents. The findings reveal significant differences between the two countries leading to lower transactive and lower normative effectiveness in Austria. The framework demonstrates its high suitability for analysing EIA effectiveness and for developing recommendations. The outcomes also underline the significant influence of the project type.
Climate change adaptation needs to receive extensive attention in the forestry sector. While measures are being applied in federal forests and large private properties, it remains unclear how ...small-scale private forest owners, with a property <20ha, perceive the possible influence of climate change and whether they will approach required activities. While in the past, the majority of private forest owners had ties to agriculture and cultivated farmland alongside their forests, recent studies revealed new trends and significant deviations from established norms and beliefs. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the motivations for forest ownership, current management practices, and perception of and adaptability to climate change, to discuss successful approaches for information campaigns, advisory services, and monetary incentives. The study applied a questionnaire with an embedded choice experiment, which obtained a thorough understanding of the salient factors influencing decision-making by surveying 919 forest owners across Austria. Results show that small-scale private forest owners are not homogenous. Three distinct segments were identified (utility oriented, recreation oriented, and tradition conscious forest owners) which reacted differently to provided management options and incentives. However, even under a worst-case scenario setting, 84% of forest owners would select some sort of management over no procedure, indicating that forest management is not generally rejected. Information campaigns should rather focus on soft management leading to attractive, stable and highly diverse forest stands resilient to climate change than on cost efficiency and financial benefits. Therefore, advisory services need to convey, that all forest measures are performed with special care and under consideration of the remaining forest and that each stand is treated individually with adequate equipment. Increasing monetary incentives, such as funding, barely influences forest owners' decision-making and are therefore deemed unfeasible and unable to motivate the owners to undertake climate change adaptation measures. The study shows that a segmentation based on management behavior and preferences rather than on predefined characteristics has the potential to define a new state of the art. Overall, climate change adaptation through tailored forest management is highly supported by the presented findings.
•Detailed segmentation and description of Austrian small-scale private forest owners•Adaptation depends on proposed management strategies: soft procedures are preferred.•Technologically advanced management with harvesters and intensive cutting is rejected.•Payments and funding have little influence on the decision-making.•Tailored services can provide sufficient incentives for adaptation of management.
Tourismus und Klimawandel Pröbstl-Haider, Ulrike; Lund-Durlacher, Dagmar; Olefs, Marc ...
2021, 2020-11-30
eBook
Open access
Diese Open-Access-Publikation beleuchtet die komplexen Beziehungen zwischen Tourismus und Klimawandel für die Tourismusdestination Österreich und basiert auf einer umfassenden Erhebung, ...Zusammenfassung und Bewertung des aktuellen Standes der Forschung zu diesem Thema. Für diesen Bericht haben 40 Wissenschaftler*innen führender Forschungseinrichtungen, unterstützt durch ein internationales Team an Begutachter*innen, mehr als zwei Jahre intensiv zusammengearbeitet. Die dargestellten Forschungsarbeiten zum Einfluss des Klimawandels auf den Tourismus gehen davon aus, dass sich die in den nächsten Jahrzehnten zu erwartenden Veränderungen des Klimas sehr stark auf die österreichische Tourismusbranche auswirken werden. Allerdings fällt dem Sektor auch eine nicht unerhebliche Rolle als Mitverursacher des Klimawandels zu. Aktuellen Untersuchungen zufolge verursacht der Tourismus rund 8% aller globalen CO2-Emissionen. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden für die verschiedenen Teilaspekte des touristischen Angebots geeignete Minderungs- und Anpassungsmaßnahmen vorgestellt und diskutiert. Der Bericht verdeutlicht insbesondere die spezifische Betroffenheit der touristischen Outdoor-Aktivitäten vom Wintersport bis zum Golftourismus, beschreibt die neuen Herausforderungen für den Städtetourismus und die Organisation von Events und beleuchtet ausführlich, wie Anpassungsmöglichkeiten, insbesondere im Bereich der Mobilität, der Beherbergung, touristischer Indoor-Angebote, sowie der Gastronomie und Kulinarik, ausgestaltet und umgesetzt werden können. Dabei werden die Verantwortung und die Möglichkeiten des Reisenden ebenso dargestellt, wie die Handlungsoptionen von Betrieben, Destinationen und der rahmensetzenden nationalen Politik. Das Buch macht deutlich, dass, um die Pariser Klimaziele erreichen zu können, ein veränderter Lebensstil und rasche Umsetzungsschritte notwendig sind. Wie dieser „Paris-Lifestyle“ erreicht werden könnte und welche Herausforderungen auf diesem Weg bewältigt werden müssen, verdeutlichen die zusammenfassenden Schlusskapitel. Die vorliegende differenzierte Aufbereitung des Themas für alle Reisenden, die Tourismusbranche und die Politik war nur durch eine gezielte Förderung aus Mitteln des Klima- und Energiefonds im Rahmen des Programms „Austrian Climate Research Programme – ACRP“ möglich.
The special issue presents international experiences with COVID-19 in the years 2020 and 2021 on outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism. To set the scene, a bibliometric and qualitative analysis ...illustrates and clusters recent publications on COVID-19. Against this background contributions from Japan, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Austria, Croatia, the United States, New Zealand, Taiwan, Australia, Sweden, Poland and Ireland draw a truly international picture of the pandemic crisis, the effects, coping behavior and related strategies. The papers contribute to the COVID-19 related research by documenting the shock in the field of outdoor recreation and tourism, by understanding the immediate consequences on behavior and the required managerial consequences and finally, by analyzing the possible follow up effects including long term effects, discussing resilient solutions and proposing new strategies. In the discussion section we try to answer the questions whether the high visitation rate in recreation facilities, forests, parks and protected areas will remain, and whether adapted visitor management concepts will be required. In addition, we discuss possible implications for urban planning and management. Finally, based on a changing connectedness to nature also possible positive effects by the pandemic are discussed which may lead to a new target group in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism.
The overview on the Covid-19 related literature suggests improvements in planning and management, such as-new concepts for destination and visitor management, considering an ongoing risk-management,-proactive urban planning and management considering short-term effects in the existing built environment as well as a long-term perspective with strategically planned green infrastructure, including not only the supply of green infrastructure, but also its accessibility, its amenities, and aspects of environmental justice,-the consideration of new target groups in tourism and outdoor recreation.
Participative planning approaches are vital to sustainable development in rural areas. However, stakeholder involvement also faces many barriers. In this Danube region case study, barriers to ...stakeholder involvement across eight rural regions are investigated. With the standardized conditions provided through an ERDF and IPA funded EU project, special attention could be paid to socio-cultural barriers, specifically concerning perception of sustainability and conflicts of interest. The effects of these barriers to the planning process are seen in the comparison of awareness concerning overall goals, indicators and the regional self-assessments. The implications for planning and management in rural tourism areas find that the perception of sustainability varies greatly, perceived deficiencies increase awareness and that crucial indicators need to be understood by stakeholders beginning a participative planning approach.
This study investigates cultural differences in tourist preferences for climate change adaptation strategies of cross-country skiers in Austria and Finland. We used the value orientation approach to ...empirically test whether this concept is sensitive to skiers’ climate change adaptation preferences in the two respective countries. The comparisons between the two countries were made even more specific with three identical motivation-based segments that accounted for heterogeneity within the respective samples. All comparisons were based on either regular survey questions or on the results of a choice experiment. The results reveal significant differences between skiers for the overall national samples, as well as for numerous comparisons between specific segments. Thus, we conclude that adaptation strategy planning should consider cultural differences and that the transferability of strategies even within the western cultures of Europe is limited.
This paper interrogates the polarized and heated discussions about mountain bike tourism in Austrian forests, with several organizations favoring permitting biking on all forest roads, using claimed ...tourism development opportunities, while other stakeholders including hikers, hunters and landowners wish to restrict development. An international literature review on the value and impacts of mountain biking shows that both sides have oversimplified complex cases. The paper draws on 12 in-depth interviews with Austrian tourism destination and mountain bike experts to find ways forward. Results suggest that in Austria, bike tourism will increase in the future, supported by new bike technology, including electric bikes and new hand-held route information technology. It notes the complexity of the market for mountain and other forms of cycle tourism, and the pressing need to create not more trails but more sophisticated tourism products, including appealing and well-maintained trails plus attractive leisure infrastructure (bike rental, service and repair facilities, attractive localities, accommodation suited to the mountain bikers' needs, etc.). Collaborative planning with all stakeholders, better trail construction standards adapted to differing preferences, needs and environmental conditions as well as clear standards for monitoring are prerequisites of an Austrian strategy for sustainable cycle tourism development and management, which can be replicated elsewhere.
Alpine pastures are central to tourism in the European Alps. Tourism development in many alpine destinations relies significantly on the work force and products of alpine farmers without considering ...or integrating them in tourism related processes, assuming that farmers are interested in further economic growth through tourism. The question arises, whether an adequate involvement will support this interest in maintaining or expanding tourism use. The paper at hand used questionnaires and in-depth interviews with alpine farmers in the Achental region of Southern Bavaria, Germany, to examine current experiences with tourism and outdoor recreation. The study concludes that the interest in expanding tourism use is rather limited and financial aspects have little impact on the main motivation to engage in tourism development. In contrast, the study shows many conflicts arising in the clash between agricultural production and tourism use. Therefore, management actions by the local association Eco-model Achental tasked with tourism coordination are essential, including farmers as stakeholders in a participative planning process. New initiatives and support covering legal aspects, visitor management, information, networking, energy and water management are considered key to maintain this sustainable form of rural tourism in the region.
In this paper we recognize that certain stakeholder groups have been neglected in tourism planning processes. However, stakeholders who are largely responsible for stewardship of the landscape need to be incorporated in regional tourism development to ensure sustainability. Therefore, the following management actions are identified:
-Actively engage crucial stakeholders in participatory planning processes.
-Understand that stakeholders' motives are not necessarily based on economic gain.
-Identify factors that support landscape maintenance.
-Create a network of stakeholders to generate appropriate support for a variety of interests.
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