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This research assessed the sustainability of protected area-based tourism systems in Nepal. The research was composed of three interrelated studies. The first study evaluated different approaches to protected area governance. This was a multiple-case study research involving three protected areas in Nepal: the Annapurna Conservation Area, Chitwan National Park, and the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area. Data were collected from various published and unpublished sources and supplemented with 55 face-to-face interviews. Results revealed that outcomes pertaining to biodiversity conservation, community livelihoods, and sustainable tourism vary across these protected areas. The study concluded that there is no institutional panacea for managing protected areas. The second study diagnosed the sustainability of tourism in two destination communities: Ghandruk and Sauraha, which are located within the Annapurna Conservation Area and Chitwan National Park, respectively. A systemic, holistic approach--the social-ecological system framework--was used to analyze the structures, processes, and outcomes of tourism development. Data collection involved 45 face-to-face semi-structured interviews and a review of published and unpublished documents. Results revealed that tourism has several positive and a few negative sociocultural, economic, and ecological outcomes in both communities. Overall, tourism has progressed towards sustainability in these destinations. The third study examined tourism stakeholders' perspectives regarding sustainable tourism outcomes in protected areas. The study compared the responses of residents with residents, as well as tourists with tourists, across the Annapurna Conservation Area and Chitwan National Park. Tourism sustainability was evaluated with six tourism impact subscales measuring negative and positive ecological, economic, and social impacts. Data were collected using the survey method. Respondents included 230 residents and 205 tourists in Annapurna, and 220 residents and 210 tourists in Chitwan. The findings revealed that the residents across these protected areas perceived positive and negative impacts differently, as did the tourists, suggesting that the form of tourism development affects the sustainability outcomes in protected areas. Overall, this research concluded that protected areas and tourism are intricately related, and sustainable management of a protected area-based tourism system requires a polycentric adaptive approach that warrants a broad participation of relevant stakeholders.
ContributorsPoudel, Surya (Author) / Nyaupane, Gyan P (Thesis advisor) / Timothy, Dallen J. (Committee member) / Budruk, Megha (Committee member) / Parker, Peter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Recent research within the field of natural resource management has been devoted to studying the cognitive structures, called mental models, that guide people’s thoughts, actions, and decision-making. Artificial lighting threatens the sustainability of pristine night skies around the world and is growing worldwide at an average rate of six-percent per year. Despite these trends, stakeholders’ mental models of night skies have been unexplored. This study will address this gap by eliciting stakeholders’ mental models of dark skies. Scenario planning has become a pervasive tool across diverse sectors to analyze complex systems for making decisions under uncertainty. The theory of scenario planning hypothesizes that scenario planning contributes to learning and improves upon participants’ mental models. However, there have been scant empirical studies attempting to investigate these two claims. Stakeholders’ mental models of dark skies were mapped while simultaneously testing the hypotheses that participation in scenario planning results in more complex mental models and alters environmental attitudes. Twenty-one Arizona stakeholders participated in one of two workshops during September 2016. Three identical surveys were given to measure knowledge, environmental attitudes and mental model change during the workshops. Knowledge gain peaked during the introductory lecture and continued to increase during the workshop. Scenario planning increased participants’ environmental attitudes from anthropocentric to nature-centered and was found to have a significant positive impact on dark sky advocates’ change in mental model complexity. The most prominent drivers affecting dark skies were identified using social network analysis of the pre and post mental models. The most prominent concepts were altered significantly from pre to post workshop suggesting that scenario planning may aid practitioners in understanding exogenous factors to their area of expertise. These findings have critical theoretical and managerial implications of mental model alteration, environmental attitudes, and the future of Arizona’s night skies. A revised theoretical framework is offered to include environmental attitudes into the theory of scenario planning and a conceptual framework was created to illustrate the most salient drivers affecting or being affected by dark skies.
ContributorsHobbins, Robert J (Author) / Nyaupane, Gyan P (Thesis advisor) / Budruk, Megha (Committee member) / Iwaniec, David M (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016