Why are some animals popular with wildlife tourists: insights from South Africa

IF 2.4 Q2 HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM

Journal of Ecotourism Pub Date : 2021-12-31 DOI:10.1080/14724049.2021.2019261

J. R. Mangachena, C. Pickering

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引用次数: 5

Abstract

ABSTRACT Wildlife tourism is an important type of ecotourism including in South Africa. We considered how the aesthetic value theory can be applied to wildlife tourism by assessing the relative popularity of species with tourists in South Africa and which traits predicted popularity. When data from six published visitor surveys across seven protected areas were combined, we found that only 26 species out of 299 mammals and 850 + birds were selected by 2245 tourists. Elephant (48%), black and white rhinos (36%), lion (36%), cheetah (35%) and giraffe (34%) were the most popular in these visitor surveys with similar results reported in data from destination marketing and social media, but not wildlife auctions. When 13 species traits were assessed using ordinations and Generalised Linear Models, traits associated with specific aesthetics were important as large mammals that use open vegetation, with highly contrasting coat colours and/or are fluffy were most popular. Given the diversity of animals in South Africa, those responsible for wildlife tourism opportunities could diversify the types of species used in marketing to better match animals likely to be encountered in the wild, enhancing repeat visitor experiences while promoting the conservation of more species in the region.

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为什么有些动物受到野生动物游客的欢迎:来自南非的见解

摘要野生动物旅游是包括南非在内的一种重要的生态旅游类型。我们通过评估物种在南非游客中的相对受欢迎程度以及哪些特征可以预测受欢迎程度，来考虑如何将美学价值理论应用于野生动物旅游。当将七个保护区六项已公布的游客调查数据结合起来时，我们发现299种哺乳动物中只有26种，850种 + 2245名游客挑选了这些鸟。大象（48%）、黑白犀牛（36%）、狮子（36%），猎豹（35%）和长颈鹿（34%）在这些游客调查中最受欢迎，目的地营销和社交媒体的数据中报告了类似的结果，但野生动物拍卖没有报告。当使用坐标和广义线性模型评估13个物种的特征时，与特定美学相关的特征很重要，因为使用开放植被、具有高度对比的毛色和/或蓬松的大型哺乳动物最受欢迎。鉴于南非动物的多样性，负责野生动物旅游机会的人可以使营销中使用的物种类型多样化，以更好地匹配野外可能遇到的动物，增强游客的体验，同时促进该地区更多物种的保护。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Ecotourism Social Sciences-Geography, Planning and Development

CiteScore

6.40

自引率

12.50%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Ecotourism seeks to advance the field by examining the social, economic, and ecological aspects of ecotourism at a number of scales, and including regions from around the world. Journal of Ecotourism welcomes conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research, particularly where it contributes to the dissemination of new ideas and models of ecotourism planning, development, management, and good practice. While the focus of the journal rests on a type of tourism based principally on natural history - along with other associated features of the man-land nexus - it will consider papers which investigate ecotourism as part of a broader nature based tourism, as well as those works which compare or contrast ecotourism/ists with other forms of tourism/ists.