Monitoring tourists’ specialisation and implementing adaptive governance is necessary to avoid failure of the wildlife tourism commons

Francesca Mancini*, Ben Leyshon, Fiona Manson, George M. Coghill, David Lusseau

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Wildlife tourism (WT) is an important economic sector globally, which can sustain national and local economies. These activities have been reconceptualised as consumptive because of their impacts on the wildlife, and the problem of managing WT as a common-pool resource issue. We use an individual-based model to simulate the dynamics of a WT destination in different development phases. We then ask if any of the governance structures commonly proposed to solve common pool resource issues are appropriate to sustainably manage a WT destination during its development. The level of specialisation of tourists visiting a destination can influence both the exploitation of the wildlife and the socio-economic success of the industry, and no single governance structure leads to sustainability in every stage of a WT destination lifecycle. Given the dynamics of WT destinations, an adaptive governance framework is crucial to avoid wildlife depletion and economic failure of the industry.

Original languageEnglish
Article number104160
Number of pages14
JournalTourism Management
Volume81
Early online date26 May 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was funded by the University of Aberdeen, through MASTS (the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland), and Scottish Natural Heritage ( SNH ), through a Dominic Counsell studentship, and their support is gratefully acknowledged. The authors would also like to thank Alex Douglas for allowing us to run the simulations on the Catling computer cluster.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

  • Adaptive governance
  • Common-pool resources
  • Individual-based model
  • Simulation
  • Socioecological systems
  • Sustainability
  • Tourist specialisation
  • Wildlife watching

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