The effectiveness of interpretation involved in wildlife feeding tourism: a case study in Wushan macaque reserve

• Main Authors: Wei-jie Huang, 黃韋傑
• Other Authors: Che-yu Hsui
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/78966209234074792648

碩士 === 南華大學 === 旅遊管理學系旅遊管理碩士班 === 100 === 　　In recent years, wildlife tourism (WT) has become increasingly popular around the world. And the trend of wildlife interaction emphasize on observing, photographing, touching, feeding and other non-consumptive experiencing wild animals. In which, feeding was preferred owing to its close contact characteristic and could interact with each other. Unfortunately, there were many scientific evidences shown that feeding wildlife would lead to significant negative impacts; though with the implementation of proper management, this kind of WT mode could contribute to ecological conservation. However, it still exist controversial and conflicting issues between conservation and economic growth when developing wildlife feeding tourism. Therefore, the overriding objective of this research was to propose an conceptual model that considered economy and conservation aspects as well. It regards the feeding of animals as a tool and conservation as a final goal. The study sampling was conducted in Wushan macaque reserve in Tainan, Taiwan. And the descriptive statistical analysis, regression, and interference analysis were adopted as methods. The mainly disscussed variables include interpretation activities, tourists’ enjoyment, emotional attachment, environmental attitudes, intentions and environmental behavior. During the study period (February 5, 2011 to March 26, 2011), a total of 450 questionnaires were collected, and 415 were available. The results show that when the interpretation was induced to WT feeding activities, it can really enhance tourists’ experience and improve tourists’ enjoyment; as regards the relationship between enjoyment and environmental attitude, it depends on the emotional attachment of tourists to the feeded target species; Specifically, when the tourists was classified as higher emotional attachment, their environmental attitudes were mainly affected by the emotional linking intensity betwween tourists and wildlifes; on the contrary, tourists that have lower emotional attachment should emphasize the experiencing enjoyment to improve their environmental attitudes. In fact, the results proposed by the research provide an important insight in WT feeding. In additional, the proposed intergrated model that combined the economic development psespective and conservation issues, could not only grow local economy, but also improve tourists’ attitude, intention, as well as behavior. As consequently, help the wildlife feeding tourism more sustainable.