Photo credit: The Undertow Media.
By Yolanda L. Waters, Riccardo Losciale, Kerrie A. Wilson, and Angela J. Dean.
Nature-based tourism, which brings people to iconic places that are affected by climate change, such as coral reefs and rainforests, has a unique chance to encourage widespread action. However, there’s has been some worry that talking about climate change could deter visitors and ruin their day. We put this to the test and explored how sharing information about climate change in vulnerable nature settings, such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, influences visitors’ experiences and their engagement with climate change.
To do this, we conducted a study where we provided climate change information on tourist boats on the Great Barrier Reef and compared it to trips without. We surveyed 656 visitors about their experiences, and behaviours. Interestingly, we found that visitors who received climate information were more likely to say their reef experience exceeded their expectations. Importantly, they didn’t report feeling less satisfied with their trip overall. This suggests that talking about climate change doesn’t ruin the experience, it might even enhance it. However, while we saw an increase in threat awareness (I.e., recognising climate change as a threat to the reefs health), we didn’t see much change in visitors intentions to take action or seek more information about climate change. This shows there’s room to improve how we share climate information through tourism and create experiences that ignite transformative change. Importantly, we find that tourists were open to learning more about climate change during their visits, especially about the actions they can take. So, while more research is needed to find the best ways to encourage climate action through tourism, we suggest that providing climate information, what some worry might harm tourism experiences, could actually lead to better outcomes for everyone involved.
Relational Thinking 