It is sometimes said that the best ecotourist is the one that stays on the couch. And there is some truth behind that. Every time someone heads out into nature, there is some degree of negative impact. So, from this view, the best nature enthusiast is the one who avoids impacting nature at all.
However, there remains a prevailing belief that there is value—beyond the individual benefits—in people venturing into nature. In fact, one of the national parks I visited a few years ago specifically acknowledged that every time someone enters this particular set of caverns, it damages the environment irreparably. Yet, they claimed, they remain open to the public in hopes that people’s experience there inspires them to go on to help protect nature on a larger scale. And there it is: the idea that tourists’ experiences with nature can make them more pro-environmentally inclined in the future.
As always, however, this idea needs to be tested empirically…which is exactly what we did in this study. We were specifically interested in whether travelers’ recent travel experiences predicted noticeable differences in their sustainability-oriented mindsets. In an online survey of recent travelers, we measured the extent to which their recent travel experience was characterized as (a) nature-based travel (e.g., visiting national parks) and (b) culture-based travel (e.g., visiting cultural heritage sites). We also measured the extent to which they had so-called eudaimonic experiences (i.e., experiences that involved a sense of meaning in life, personal growth, or authenticity) and hedonic experiences (i.e., fun and relaxation/avoidance of discomfort). Finally, we measured their endorsements of sustainability-oriented mindsets.
Eudaimonia
Eudaimonia—sometimes translated to “flourishing”—is used to refer to a specific kind of positive experience. It refers to experiences that involve one or more of the following:
- a sense of meaning and purpose in life
- a sense of personal growth or becoming our best self
- a sense of authenticity or being true to ourself
Some common examples of eudaimonic experiences are volunteering at a soup kitchen or visiting war memorials; these are positive experiences in the sense that people feel that they have a positive impact on their lives, but they aren’t necessarily fun, per se. They can be fun, but that isn’t what they are known for.
This is often contrasted with “hedonia” which is consistent with our typical conceptualization of fun and relaxation. For example, sipping mai tais on the beach. Fun, but not known for being loaded with meaning, personal growth, or authenticity.
On the whole, participants who had more nature-based travel experiences experienced greater eudaimonia on their trip, which, in turn, predicted greater sustainable thinking. Similarly, on average, participants who had more culture-based experiences experienced greater eudaimonia and subsequent sustainable thinking.
So, it seemed that both nature-based and culture-based travel ended up including more “meaningful” experiences which allowed them to have a bigger impact on sustainable thinking. This provides at least some evidence that nature-based tourism can have a positive pro-environmental impact on travelers! “Hooray,” the national parks might say.
What was particularly intriguing, however, was that our analyses showed that the most impactful experiences were those that contained BOTH nature-based and culture-based characteristics. These experiences ended up including more meaning and purpose (i.e., eudaimonia) which led to greater sustainable thinking.
What about fun (i.e., hedonic experiences)? Does it matter how much fun the trip was? In the end, it didn’t matter how much fun the experiences were, at least in this dataset. The only thing that mattered was how eudaimonic/meaningful they were.
So, the next time you travel somewhere like a national park, maybe take some time to consider how that experience contributes to your sense of meaning and purpose in life, contributes to your sense of personal growth, or contributes to your sense of personal authenticity (e.g., being true to yourself)!
Read more:
Lengieza, M. L., Hunt, C. A., & Swim, J. K. (2022). Ecotourism, eudaimonia, and sustainability insights. Journal of Ecotourism. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14724049.2021.2024215
Lengieza, M. L., Hunt, C. A., & Swim, J. K. (2019a). Measuring eudaimonic travel experiences. Annals of Tourism Research, 74, 195-197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2018.05.002
Lengieza, M. L., Hunt, C. A., & Swim, J. K. (2019b). Travel-induced learning: a validation of the sustainability insight scale. Current Issues in Tourism, 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2019.1584160
Below is a project that builds on this work!
MeaningInNature.com 