Professor Caroline Scarles

Research Summary This report presents the results of analyses of data from three sources: an online, UK-representative survey (n= 850), in-depth interviews (n = 34), and 808 photographs of nature taken by the interview participants. Four research questions were addressed through the analyses: 1. What terms did people use to describe trees and treed places? 2. Were tree-focused places perceived as more natural? And did respondents feel more connected to nature in tree-focused places? 3. How important were trees and different treed settings in participants’ nature engagement experiences? 4. Were trees and treed places associated with greater wellbeing? Key Findings 1. General terms for tree (e.g. “tree”) and treed environments (e.g. “woodland”) are in much wider use than more specific terms (e.g. “grove”, “orchard”, “oak”). 2. Tree-focused places (i.e. places where trees & woodland were mentioned) were perceived as more natural than places without a tree focus, with respondents perceiving more greenery, animals, birds and insects, natural sounds, and natural materials. Respondents also felt more connected to nature in tree-focused places. 3. Both the survey and photo analyses evidenced the key role of trees in participants’ nature engagement experiences, with trees regularly featuring in photographs, and participants engaging with trees in a range of settings (in woodland, outside of woodland, in urban and rural locations). 4. Trees & treed places contribute to perceived wellbeing in a range of ways. Key Recommendations 1. Researchers and practitioners need to take on board peoples’ language preferences and design future studies and interventions according to their level of understanding/usage of various terms for “tree”. 2. Researchers and practitioners could explore the potential value of 'the presence of trees' as a proxy for greater perceived diversity (of sounds, habitats, lifeforms) in an environment. 3. Research should examine the perceptions of trees in different settings (in/outside woodland, in urban/ rural locations), as well as capture a range of activities and motivations for engagement with trees. In particular, more research is needed on the perceptions and benefits of rural trees outside of woodland. 4. Researchers and practitioners should further explore, understand and promote the different wellbeing benefits of trees, as well as explore ways that promoting the public health benefits of trees could further support other areas of tree-related research, policy and practice, such as tree and land management.

While the tourism sector shifts towards digital transformation, Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) often struggle to adapt to their changing technological environment. This study explores the antecedents of digital collaboration and develops a framework for micro-DMOs to enhance effective destination management through digital technologies. An integrated sequential qualitative approach was adopted by conducting multi-phase interviews, in addition to designing and trialling a real-world trial digital platform. The research provides empirical evidence that digital collaboration is essential for micro-DMOs, necessitating them to transform their current “websites” into digital platforms which act as a hub for business stakeholders to actively be involved in. Antecedents of successful digital collaboration include mutuality, trust, control, and leadership which may be manifested differently from non-digital collaboration. Additionally, the study identifies three aspects for digital collaboration; marketing, networking and knowledge sharing that demands specific attention. Our results have theoretical, methodological, and practical implications for academia, industry and policymakers.

Holidaying is an important leisure pursuit and, for a growing minority, air travel is the default mode for holiday mobility. However, the current trend of increasing demand for air travel runs contrary to climate-related sustainability goals. Efforts to motivate reductions in consumption of holiday air travel must contend with the embeddedness of flying as a social practice and should be informed by an understanding of how people prioritize air travel for holidays relative to other forms of consumption. Using data drawn from a survey of 2066 British adults, this exploratory study uses a novel method to assess the willingness of individuals to sacrifice holiday air travel relative to their willingness to make changes to their daily consumption patterns. We find a greater readiness to undertake additional expense (of time, effort, or money) than to retrench incumbent consumption patterns in order to fly for holidays. Reluctance to sacrifice for the sake of flying was greatest with regards to those items that are most associated with the basic infrastructure of modern life (e.g., mobile phones). Examining product-specific pro-environmental sacrifice in relative terms, our findings suggest that voluntary reductions in flying is more plausible than other modes of pro-environmental sacrifice.

This research proposes a framework of intergenerational learning (IGL) that supports child-to-parent influence in the context of heritage learning using augmented reality (AR) and serious game applications. Positioning children as the behavioural catalysts in the learning process, the framework is developed based on several considerations and requirements. First, the technologies are designed to play a role in attracting and engaging children in learning and providing an intergenerational participation structure to allow children to influence parents’ attitudes and behaviour. Second, using the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics framework of game design, the game elements are designed to provide realistic context for experiential learning, informative guiding and player interactions to increase engagement, as well as clear and measurable success indicators to increase motivation. The outcome of this framework is attitude and behaviour change in children and parents with regards to heritage preservation and appreciation, which is one of the main goals of heritage tourism managers.

The dynamic organisational processes in businesses dilute the boundaries between the individual, organisational, and societal drivers of corporate philanthropy. This creates a complex framework in which charitable project selection occurs. Using the example of European tour operators, this study investigates the mechanisms through which companies invest in charitable projects in overseas destinations. Inextricably linked to this is the increasing contestation by local communities as to how they are able to engage effectively with tourism in order to realise the benefits tourism development can bring. This research furthers such debates by exploring the processes through which tour operators facilitate community development through charitable giving. Findings show, with no formal frameworks in existence, project selection depends upon emergent strategies that connect the professional with the personal, with trust being positioned as a central driver of these informal processes. Discretionary responsibilities are reworked through business leaders’ commitment to responsible business practises and the ethical subjectivity guiding these processes.

This paper suggests that phenomenological studies of tourism mobilities can be informed by non-representational approaches. We extend recent developments in sensory tourism research and non-representational works to argue that methods upon which tourism researchers have long relied require ‘pushing’ or merging in previously underutilised ways that support these emerging areas of study. As a result, this paper embraces embodied methodologies. It integrates audio-visual impressionistic tales and netnographic snippets to shape its multisensory exploration of an under-researched European tourism and train travel phenomenon, interrailing. Our analysis exemplifies how the rhythmscapes and soundscapes of everyday rail travel inform the experience of interrail. Finally, we introduce the concept of thermalscapes, giving attention to the relatively neglected role of temperatures in tourism experiences.

Smartphone technology has changed the scope of onsite travel behaviors and photographing practices. This paper explores the destination response of the Tourist Board of Vienna with their “anti-hashtag” marketing campaign, aimed at encouraging visitors to go offline while traveling in the city. Through a series of interviews, the motivations for the campaign, along with the initial approaches and outcomes for the campaign are studied using narrative analysis. The results indicate a positive response to the campaign, and potential models for similar destinations to manage similar visitor social networking and photographic behaviors are considered. Additionally, there are both academic and industry implications discussed.

This paper develops a concept of interfacing as a heterogeneous zone of interaction, a relational space created by users as they bring together interact with and draw on a range of digital and analogue materials, sources and technologies. It examines the ways tourists and travellers access, engage, use, transfer and blend multiple media sources drawing across both analogue and digital sources as they plan, execute and reflect on the trips and visits they make. It derives from a series of in depth ‘show and tell’ style interviews with 18 participants recruited in the UK. Research shows how respondents were adept at mixing, matching and blending a variety of materials, sources and technologies as part of the planning, executing, recording and presentation of travel experiences. It contributes to the growing literature on digital geographies by exploring the relational spatiality by which individuals build interfacing activities around specific tasks and experiences as heterogeneous and contingent socio-material spaces. It develops a conception of interfacing around two interrelated and iterative sets of embodied practices. These are firstly, assembling and mobilising and secondly intermediating and sense making. Using this twin conception of interfacing as an active making, the paper discusses how and where a conception of interfacing as embodied practice might contribute to understandings of human digital relationships within complex poly media situations and environments.

This paper presents visual autoethnography as a method for exploring the embodied performances of tourists' experiences. As a fusion of visual elicitation and autoethnographic encounter, visual autoethnography mobilises spaces of understanding; transcending limitations of verbal discourse and opening spaces for mutual appreciation and reflection. The paper proposes, through visual autoethnography, researcher and respondents connect through intersubjective negotiation; unpacking intricate performances and mobilising knowledge exchange through a will to knowledge. Visual autoethnography ignites embodied connections and understanding as visuals become the bridge that connects researcher and respondent experiences within the interview. The paper argues visual autoethnography facilitates the "sharing of speech" and generates "sounds of silence" that facilitate an enriched research space within which previously 'hidden' embodied knowledges are shared.

This paper seeks to renegotiate the role of visuals and visual practice within the tourist experience. Embracing recent developments in tourist studies, I seek to move from understanding tourism as a series of predetermined, linear, and static stages through which we pass to be a tourist. In doing so, I explore the ways in which visuals, in particular photography and subsequent visualities, enliven tourists' becoming through a multiplicity of fluid and dynamic performances, practices, and processes. I suggest photography is not merely an empty practice, but, rather, lights up the tourist experience. The emerging dynamics of visual practice renegotiate new understandings between tourists and place to establish a series of conceptual moments that outline photography as: political artefacts, reflexive performances, the imagination of space, embodied visualities, and ethical prompts. Such conceptualisations and practices of tourist photography are by no means arbitrary, but are situated in a framework of visuality that highlights key moments of anticipation, rewriting, and remembrance and reliving. Thus, I move beyond notions of the hermeneutic cycle of travel, and present photographs and photography as complex performative spaces that extend beyond divisible boundaries of the before, during, and after travel experiences and infiltrate the entire tourist experience.

This paper seeks to extend existing discussions of post-disaster tourism in New Orleans by considering how competing narratives of disaster operate within the tourist experience available in New Orleans. More specifically, we explore how personal reflections and the collective memories of a community are practiced and mobilised as occasions for tourists to connect with and share in memories of disaster in post-Katrina New Orleans. We suggest that in a city where tourism has long been vital to the economic, social and cultural make-up of the place the power of sharing has emerged through personal narratives, artefacts and experiences that, more than a decade after the disaster, are woven into the tourist experience by individuals such as tour guides, curators of exhibitions, street artists, and participants in anniversary ceremonies.

Electronic publishing usually presents readers with book or e-book options for reading on paper or screen. In this paper, we introduce a third method of reading on paper-and-screen through the use of an augmented book (‘a-book’) with printed hotlinks than can be viewed on a nearby smartphone or other device. Two experimental versions of an augmented guide to Cornwall are shown using either optically recognised pages or embedded electronics making the book sensitive to light and touch. We refer to these as second generation (2G) and third generation (3G) paper respectively. A common architectural framework, authoring workflow and interaction model is used for both technologies, enabling the creation of two future generations of augmented books with interactive features and content. In the travel domain we use these features creatively to illustrate the printed book with local multimedia and updatable web media, to point to the printed pages from the digital content, and to record personal and web media into the book.

If tourism is to become part of a more sustainable lifestyle, changes are needed to the patterns of behaviour adopted by the public. This paper presents the results of research conducted amongst members of the public in England on their understanding of sustainable tourism; their response to four desired tourism behaviour goals, and expectations about the role of government and the tourism industry in encouraging sustainable tourism. The research shows a lack of awareness of tourism’s impact relative to day-to-day behaviour, feelings of disempowerment and an unwillingness to make significant changes to current tourism behaviour.

This paper presents visual autoethnography as a method for exploring the embodied performances of tourists' experiences. As a fusion of visual elicitation and autoethnographic encounter, visual autoethnography mobilises spaces of understanding; transcending limitations of verbal discourse and opening spaces for mutual appreciation and reflection. The paper proposes, through visual autoethnography, researcher and respondents connect through intersubjective negotiation; unpacking intricate performances and mobilising knowledge exchange through a will to knowledge. Visual autoethnography ignites embodied connections and understanding as visuals become the bridge that connects researcher and respondent experiences within the interview. The paper argues visual autoethnography facilitates the "sharing of speech" and generates "sounds of silence" that facilitate an enriched research space within which previously 'hidden' embodied knowledges are shared.

This paper critiques the opportunities afforded by immersive experience technology to create stimulating, innovative living environments for long-term residents of care homes for the elderly. We identify the ways in which virtual mobility can facilitate reconnection with recreational environments. Specifically, the project examines the potential of two assistive and immersive experiences; virtual reality (VR) and multisensory stimulation environments (MSSE). Findings identify three main areas of knowledge contribution. First, the introduction of VR and MSSE facilitated participants re-engagement and sharing of past experiences as they recalled past family holidays, day trips or everyday practices. Secondly, the combination of the hardware of the VR and MSSE technology with the physical objects of the sensory trays created alternative, multisensual ways of engaging with the experiences presented to participants. Lastly, the clear preference for the MSSE experience over the VR experience highlighted the importance of social interaction and exchange for participants.

This article discusses the concomitant processes of increasing familiarisation, responsiveness and responsibility that digital technology enables in the realm of tourism. We reflect on the influence of the proliferation of interactive digital platforms and solutions within tourism practice and behaviour through a range of lenses, from user generated content and associated interactive digital platforms, the emergence of gamification embedded within these, immersive mixed-reality media (such as virtual reality [VR] and augmented reality [AR]) and the changes in tourist behaviour that have paralleled these digital developments. We also explore the use of AI in tourism, and the methodological potential that digital technology has for tourism studies.

Paper and digital media, smartphone apps and travel guides for example, are commonly used together by travellers for reliable and up-to-date information. This paper examines how the a-book, an augmented travel guide with complementary multimedia could enrich travel experiences. Using a tailored app, travellers can access, play, and add their own videos, audio, weblinks and digital images to the guide. Results of 14 evaluations studies with UK travellers suggest that it advances concepts of co-creation, facilitates a new reading paradigm, consequently enriching travel performances. This paper provides an initial introductory to these emerging theoretical themes and suggests implications for future research.

Research shows that gardens are important for wellbeing. To examine garden use and wellbeing during the first Covid-19 lockdown, a sample of 850 UK respondents were asked to recall their experiences and use of their home gardens between March and May 2020. Key findings include: • Gardens were used frequently during the lockdown, with around 60% visiting their garden at least once a day. • Gardens were used more frequently than other natural environments during lockdown. • More frequent garden visits were associated with better wellbeing. • But more than 1 in 10 either had no access to a garden, or found it difficult to access one. • Ethnic minorities and those with a low household income were more likely to have no garden access or find access difficult. • Younger respondents were more likely to have difficult or no garden access than older respondents, with those under 47 years of age reporting the greatest difficulties. • The more nature in the garden, the greater the wellbeing of respondents. • Certain aspects of nature were particularly associated with improved wellbeing: natural sounds and smells, and animals, birds and insects. • Respondents did multiple activities in their gardens, with 43% gardening, 27% spending time resting, sitting and lying down, 21% reading, 14% watching and feeding nature, 13% listening to music, radio and podcasts, and 11% enjoying the weather.

The current trend of increasing demand for air travel runs contrary to climate-related sustainability goals. The absence of behavioural and near-term technological solutions to aviation’s environmental impacts underscores the importance of policy levers as a means of curbing carbon emissions. Where past work has used qualitative methods to sketch public opinion of environmental aviation policies, this work uses data drawn from a survey of 2066 British adults to make a quantitative assessment of the acceptability of a broad range of aviation climate policy options. The findings indicate that there is significant support across demographic groups for a large number of policies, particularly those that place financial or regulatory burdens on industry rather than on individuals directly. Support for aviation policies strengthens with pro-environmental attitudes and is weaker among people who are aeromobile. Though self-interested considerations appeared to dominate policy option preferences, concern for fairness may also shape policy acceptability. Overall, this paper provides to policymakers a quantitative evidence base of what types of policies for addressing aviation climate emissions are most publically palatable.

This study explores the way in which consumers interpret and process the marketing and communication of sustainable forms of tourism in destinations, in order to inform policy makers about the appropriateness of different types of sustainability messages. Through a thematic analysis of focus group data, we explore the ways in which consumers engage with, and respond to, explicit discourses of sustainability in marketing a tourist destination. We find that overt discourses of sustainability are often rejected by consumers, thus suggesting that messages concerned with sustainability should place greater priority upon consumer experience and opportunities afforded by the purchase and consumption of the travel experience (that happens to be sustainable) they can expect at their chosen destination. As such, commitments to sustainability manifest within organisational philosophy and practice should not drive the principle, overt discourse communicated to consumers. Rather, as embedded within product and practice, such messages would have greater power and effect if they occupied a more subliminal position in destination marketing materials.

It is widely understood that nature engagement benefits human wellbeing. Such benefits have been found for real as well as virtual engagements. However, little is known about the role of nature-based videos in social media on wellbeing. With Covid-19 restrictions limiting people's direct engagement with natural environments, this study critically examined people's reactions to nature videos posted on Facebook during the first UK Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. Data consisted of comments on videos containing highlights from the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Springwatch 2020 television series, and from a UK television presenter and naturalist's (Chris Packham) livestream videos, posted on Facebook from March to July 2020. Looking at the quantitative profile of a range of videos (i.e., views, likes and shares) and a detailed analysis of the 143,265 comments using thematic analysis, 3 major themes were generated: (1) engaging with nature via social media is emotionally complicated, (2) cognitive and reflective reactions are generated from social media nature engagement, and (3) engagement with nature-based social media as a mechanism for coping with stress during Covid-19. These findings inform understanding of how nature-related social media content and associated commentary have supported wellbeing 2 throughout the ongoing pandemic and their importance as a means of continued support for wellbeing.

This study empirically tests a conceptual model of local food consumption proposed by Kim et al. (2009) and examines relationships among the key factors found in the model. This study quantitatively identified factors affecting local food consumption: five motivations (cultural experience, interpersonal relationship, excitement, health concern, and sensory appeal); food-related personality traits (food neophobia and food involvement); and 'demographic factors' (i.e., gender, age, and annual income) and their relationships. This study showed that demographic variables (gender and age) were related to some motivational factors and significant differences in the FNG associated with gender, age and income. © 2012.

The use of actor-network thinking is increasingly evident in tourism research. ANT offers the researcher a practical, fieldwork-based orientation, emphasising detailed description of relationships between actors in practice. However, questions which arise for the researcher in using ANT are seldom confronted in the literature. This paper contributes to the growing ANT literature in tourism by identifying five ‘character traits’ relating to selection and use of method in ANT research. It uses an empirical case study to show how these traits are performative in the researcher’s ‘hinterland’ of methodological choices, providing theoretical and practical reflections for future researchers. It ends by considering how acknowledging these traits in the account can demonstrate adherence to accepted criteria for research quality.

D/deaf activists have consistently lamented their exclusion from the decision-making process by service providers. Accessibility is only effective when designed with contributions from those affected by the perceived or known barrier. This paper redresses the historic absence of the D/deaf paradigm, and recenters the focus to the individual’s perspective of accessibility requirements by developing a conceptual framework, constructed through the review of empirical and theoretical literature. The conceptual dimensions presented are from the D/deaf person’s perspective as valued through shared power and ownership. The aim of this conceptual paper is to explore how D/deaf-centric research can be applied and qualitatively measured through the combination of self-report, observation and Mobile eye tracking (MET).

Smartphone technology has changed the scope of onsite travel behaviors and photographing practices. This paper explores the destination response of the Tourist Board of Vienna with their “anti-hashtag” marketing campaign, aimed at encouraging visitors to go offline while traveling in the city. Through a series of interviews, the motivations for the campaign, along with the initial approaches and outcomes for the campaign are studied using narrative analysis. The results indicate a positive response to the campaign, and potential models for similar destinations to manage similar visitor social networking and photographic behaviors are considered. Additionally, there are both academic and industry implications discussed.

The aim of this paper is to understand the complexity of travel motivations to sacred places. Using ethnographic techniques within the Greek Orthodox context, we argue that while motivations are institutionally constructed, they are fragile, dynamic and progressive; being embedded within everyday performances of religion. This calls into question the fixed centeredness and predetermined sacredness of religious sites. Travel motivations become directly influenced by believers’ intimate and emergent performances not only of places but also of religion itself; the meaning of places being based on lived experiences of doing religion and interacting with the sacred, as exemplified in vows and visions. Such understandings are crucial in predicting the effects of failing pilgrimages and the processes of authentication of places, which can help explain visitation patterns.

The photo album emerged in the late 1800s as place to collect portrait photos of visitors to a home, and was later appropriated by Kodak as a visual chronology of family history. With digital photography the album has largely been replaced by online repositories of images shared on social media, and the selective printing of photobooks. In this paper we present a ‘next generation paper’ authoring system for annotating photobooks with multimedia content viewed on a nearby smartphone. We also report the results of a trial of this system, by nine travellers who used it to make augmented photobooks following a trip. These findings show that the augmented physical-and-digital photobook can heighten awareness of the multisensory aspects of travel, enrich memories, and enhance social interaction around photos. The social and technical implications for the future of the photo album are discussed.

Debates surrounding the human impact on climate change have, in recent years, proliferated in political, academic, and public rhetoric. Such debates have also played out in the context of tourism research (e.g. extent to which anthropogenic climate change exists; public understanding in relation to climate change and tourism). Taking these debates as its point of departure, whilst also adopting a post-structuralist position, this paper offers a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of comments to an online BBC news article concerning climate change. Our analysis finds three key ways responsibility is mitigated through climate change talk: scepticism towards the scientific evidence surrounding climate change; placing responsibility on the ‘distant other’ through a nationalistic discourse; and presenting CO2 as ‘plant food’. The implications of these ways of thinking about climate change are discussed with a focus on how this translates into action related to the sustainability of tourism behaviours. In doing so, it concludes that a deeper understanding of everyday climate talk is essential if the tourism sector is to move towards more sustainable forms of consumption.

In recent years, travel vlogs are prevalent on social media, they are projected as an important marketing tool to attract tourists to destinations in the post-COVID-19 era. However, the underlying mechanism of how travel vlogs affect prospective tourists’ behaviours remains unclear. To address this gap, this paper discusses the applicability of the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model to travel vlog research and proposes a SOR based theoretical framework. Moreover, this paper highlights the increasing trend of the SOR model in both e-tourism and wider tourism and hospitality research.

This paper advances an ethic of care for sustainable tourism. The study develops an original business care model that captures the dynamic interrelationships between care, responsibility and trust in corporate philanthropy. The model provides a novel perspective on how responsible business practices are formed across distance by shedding light on the different layers of responsibility and trust that characterize business–stakeholder relationships. The model is evaluated using the example of tour operators’ engagement in the Education for All project in Morocco. Findings show that tour operators’ commitment to caring at a distance becomes part of shared, displaced and performed articulations of responsibility. While performed responsibility acknowledges the embodiment of care, displaced responsibility shifts the responsibility to select, perform and/or oversee acts of care to stakeholders in destinations. Shared responsibility requires attention to the ways in which meanings and practices of care are co-constructed in corporate philanthropy with trust functioning as a central driver of these processes.

The large consumption of food travel vlogs during the COVID-19 pandemic shows its potential for destination promotion. However, little research has been done on this video form. This study explores the difference in food travel vlogs, short videos, live videos, and DMO promotion videos (DPVs) and concludes four distinctive characteristics of food travel vlogs (storytelling, authenticity, intimacy, and presence) through 38 semi-structured interviews. A Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model-based conceptual framework is proposed to help understand the mechanism underlying the influence of food travel vlogs on travellers. This study hopes to provide theoretical and practical implications for destination management and vlogging practices.

•During Covid-19 people visited a wide range of nearby places to get away from everyday demands, without needing to travel.•People engaged with a wide range of activities in those places, but many activities were place dependent.•All place visits benefitted hedonic and eudemonic wellbeing, but outdoor activities were more beneficial than indoor activities.•Place and activity choices varied between people. Younger people and those living in urban areas visited less outdoor places.•To support wellbeing for all it is important to identify the variety of nearby places people visit and manage access and provision of such places. Being able to get away from everyday stressors and demands, even if close to home and just for a few minutes, is important for wellbeing. During the Covid-19 lockdown periods, people’s ability to get away changed significantly. An increase in visits to nearby natural places is well documented. Little is known about other types of places people visited to get away. An online UK survey was conducted in 2020 (N = 850) investigating what places people visited to get away during the pandemic, what they did in those places, how place and activity choices were related to each other and to demographic variables, and to recalled hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing during those visits. Participants visited a rich array of places and engaged in a variety of activities that supported their hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing needs. Responses were grouped into four types of places (at home outdoors, at home indoors, away from home outdoors, and away from home indoors) and seven activity types (cognitive, walks, nature engagement, social activities, technology use, relaxing, and exercise). Place and activity choices were strongly linked. Visiting outdoor places was most beneficial for wellbeing (and most common), especially when it involved mindful engagement with nature (bird watching, gardening) or exercise. Staying indoors, engaging with technologies (computers, television) was least beneficial and more common among those with no degree or job, living in urban areas, and identifying as male. The findings demonstrate the importance of understanding place-activity interactions to support the wellbeing benefits derived from visits to places to get away.

Many studies show the possibilities and benefits of combining physical and digital information through augmented paper. Furthermore, the rise of Augmented Reality hardware and software for annotating the physical world with information is becoming more commonplace as a new computing paradigm. But so far, this has not been commercially applied to paper in a way that publishers can control. In fact, there is currently no standard way for book publishers to augment their printed products with digital media, short of using QR codes or creating custom AR apps. In this paper we outline a new publishing ecosystem for the creation and consumption of augmented books, and report the lab and field evaluation of a first commercial travel guide to use this. This is based simply on the use of the standard EPUB3 format for interactive e-books that forms the basis of a new 'a-book' file format and app.

Social media users are increasingly harming destination brands through their posts. This paper examines how to counter brand co-destruction in social media through the application of storytelling practices. Based on a netnography of TripAdvisor and Facebook, combined with a case study of the Danish destination management organization (DMO) VisitDenmark, the paper investigates the prospective ways in which social media users co-destroy the DMO’s brand. We demonstrate how value creation is a fluid process generated along a ‘brand value continuum’, as complex interplays between co-creation and co-destruction manifest through user generated content. The paper provides recommendations on how DMOs can counter co-destruction by using storytelling to influence perceptions and set agendas for user conversations that stimulate brand co-creation.

Prior to reading our text in this chapter, we invite you to spend a few minutes listening to and watching this video – https://youtube/SnoQu7B7bVs. What we present here is a conversation between five authors, each residing in different places in Australia and the UK. Sharing, listening and conversing about our everyday rambles, we set out on a collective task of recording a short ‘audio walk’ through our individual local environments. As a creative act, the chapter unfolds through the experimental, creative and collaborative form of a ‘conversation’ as a way to listen to ‘ecocide’ within and through the often overlooked, seemingly banal and mundane spaces of everyday life. In this era of ecocide, a ‘passionate immersion in the lives of fungi, microorganisms, animals and plants is opening up new understandings, relationships, and accountabilities’ (Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster 2016: 1). This experimental, emergent and creative approach is inspired by Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy that centres speculation as the ‘art of life’. In this manner, our ‘conversation’ traverses the methods, media and conversations that took place over the duration of this small project....

A large part of the global population is now connected in online social networks in social media where they share experiences and stories and consequently influence each other’s perceptions and buying behaviour. This poses a distinct challenge for destination management organisations, who must cope with a new reality where destination brands are increasingly the product of people’s shared tourism experiences and storytelling in social networks, rather than marketing strategies. This article suggests a novel interpretation on how these online social networks function with regard to generating engagement and stimulating circulation of brand stories by offering a conceptual framework based on the sociological concepts of storytelling, performance, performativity, and mobility. These concepts are characterised as ‘technologies of power’, for their role in shaping the social mechanisms in social media. VisitDenmark, the DMO of Denmark, is used as a case to put the framework into practice. The case demonstrates how DMOs can use the framework to strengthen their ssocial media branding, and five practical recommendations for how to do so are provided.

This study shifts the focus from building individual capacities to understanding the relational acts through which empowerment and education acquire their value and meaning. Conceptually, the paper employs social cognitive theory to explore the interplay between social learning, relational agency, and culture. This interplay builds the foundation for the development of an empowerment model of capacity building that proposes an interlinked system of community capacity and empowerment dimensions. The model is explored in the context of the Education for All project in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The research combines participant observation, qualitative interviews and visual methods to provide rich insights to situated knowledges of learning and empowerment. Findings reveal that the meaning of education equates to the capacity to aspire to a different life. This problematizes the way gender and gender relations are understood in the rural Berber villages. The girls’ education unsettles the repeating cycle of female educational deprivation, and leads them to become role models within their communities. This instills the image of educated women in community consciousness, leading to an incipient change in perceptions of what girls and women can be and do

This paper critiques the opportunities afforded by immersive experience technology to create stimulating, innovative living environments for long-term residents of care homes for the elderly. We identify the ways in which virtual mobility can facilitate reconnection with recreational environments. Specifically, the project examines the potential of two assistive and immersive experiences; virtual reality (VR) and multisensory stimulation environments (MSSE). Findings identify three main areas of knowledge contribution. First, the introduction of VR and MSSE facilitated participants re-engagement and sharing of past experiences as they recalled past family holidays, day trips or everyday practices. Secondly, the combination of the hardware of the VR and MSSE technology with the physical objects of the sensory trays created alternative, multisensual ways of engaging with the experiences presented to participants. Lastly, the clear preference for the MSSE experience over the VR experience highlighted the importance of social interaction and exchange for participants.

The current trend of increasing demand for air travel runs contrary to climate-related sustainability goals. The absence of behavioural and near-term technological solutions to aviation’s environmental impacts underscores the importance of policy levers as a means of curbing carbon emissions. Where past work has used qualitative methods to sketch public opinion of environmental aviation policies, this work uses data drawn from a survey of 2066 British adults to make a quantitative assessment of the acceptability of a broad range of aviation climate policy options. The findings indicate that there is significant support across demographic groups for a large number of policies, particularly those that place financial or regulatory burdens on industry rather than on individuals directly. Support for aviation policies strengthens with pro-environmental attitudes and is weaker among people who are aeromobile. Though self-interested considerations appeared to dominate policy option preferences, concern for fairness may also shape policy acceptability. Overall, this paper provides to policymakers a quantitative evidence base of what types of policies for addressing aviation climate emissions are most publically palatable.

Previous research on tourist food consumption acknowledges that food-related personality traits, including neophilic and neophobic tendencies, can impede or encourage tourists to try novel food at a destination. However, the travel motivation literature advocates that tourists tend to be in a general condition of seeking novel experiences, including sampling a destination’s novel food. How food-related personality traits interact with novelty pursuits to influence tourists’ food consumption and subsequent satisfaction and travel outcomes remains unknown. The study proposes a framework of tourist food experience that leads from food-related personality traits, novel food consumption, and satisfaction to travel outcomes. While the results support the baseline model, the moderating effect of novelty seeking demonstrates that novelty seeking does not moderate the relationship between personality traits and consumption of novel food. It does, however, moderate satisfaction with food.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been linked with numerous organizational advantages, including recruitment, retention, productivity, and morale, which relate specifcally to employees. However, despite specifc benefts of CSR relating to employees and their importance as a stakeholder group, it is noteworthy that a lack of attention has been paid to the individual level of analysis with CSR primarily being studied at the organizational level. Both research and practice of CSR have largely treated the individual organization as a “black box,” failing to account for individual diferences amongst employees and the resulting variations in antecedents to CSR engagement or disengagement. This is further exacerbated by the tendency in stakeholder theory to homogenize priorities within a single stakeholder group. In response, utilizing case study data drawn from three multinational tourism and hospitality organizations, combined with extensive interview data collected from CSR leaders, industry professionals, engaged, and disengaged employees, this exploratory research produces a fner-grained understanding of employees as a stakeholder group, identifying a number of opportunities and barriers for individual employee engagement in CSR interventions. This research proposes that employees are situated along a spectrum of engagement from actively engaged to actively disengaged. While there are some common drivers of engagement across the entire spectrum of employees, diferences also exist depending on the degree to which employees, rather than senior management, support corporate responsibility within their organizations. Key antecedents to CSR engagement that vary depending on employees’ existing level of broader engagement include organizational culture, CSR intervention design, employee CSR perceptions, and the observed benefts of participation.

This research draws on the geographical concept of situated lay-knowledge to highlight how the formation of tourists’ attitudes to travel destinations challenges the theoretical foundation of the theory of planned behavior (TPB). It suggests that situated lay knowledge is dynamic as opposed to static, which is the accepted basis of TPB, and subsequently, proposes a “Situated Lay-Knowledge Travel Behavior Model” (SLKTB). The model was tested in a mixed methods approach where Chinese tourists, who knew little about Portugal, encountered Portuguese culture and cuisine in Macau. The overall results demonstrate that the formation of tourists’ attitudes about travel destinations is not preexisting or static but dynamic and created from their ongoing encounters.

Despite the rise of digital photography, physical photos remain significant. They support social practices for maintaining social bonds, particularly in family contexts as their handling can trigger emotions associated with the individuals and themes depicted. Also, digital media can be used to strengthen the meaning of physical objects and environments represented in the material world through augmented reality, where such are overlaid with additional digital information that provide supplementary sensory context to topics conveyed. This poster therefore presents initial findings from the development of augmented photobooks to create ‘a-photobooks’, printed photobooks that are augmented by travellers with additional multimedia of their trip using a smartphone-based authoring tool. Results suggest a-photobooks could support more immersive engagement and reminiscing of holidays encounters, increasing cognitive, and emotional effects of associated experiences.

While there is significant existing research linking travel photography to self-presentation, it is the effects of ‘Instagrammability’ that mobilize significant shifts in the motivations and behaviours of tourists. This paper applies Goffman’s (1956) notion of impression management unfolding as a performance, with both front- and backstage characteristics. This research finds that the frontstage in this context is identified as the cyber behaviour, while the backstage encapsulates the physical manifestations that occur ‘behind the scenes’ to ‘get the shot’. By employing both content analysis and ethnography, new social norms of using travel images for impression management were identified in which there is a clear motive to match the ‘Instagram aesthetic’. A refreshed code of choreographed movements as photographic practices has emerged that did not exist before the popularization of Instagram. Less than 2% of photos analyzed solely feature the landscape, reinforcing the shift to self-presentation strategies as the foremost importance.

Social media platforms, like Instagram, have played a significant role in augmenting the profile of several previously obscure destinations. However, some of these places were subsequently ‘ruined’ due to related impacts associated with the type of visitor behaviors that are social media-induced. It is thus critical to better understand how to overcome such issues by discerning salient destination response strategies that cater to the cognitive biases of such travelers. This research explains the effectiveness of behavioral intervention approaches to manage the impacts of social media-induced tourism by analyzing four destination strategies that have addressed photographic practices: 1) Vienna, Austria, 2) Faroe Islands, 3) Yellowstone National Park, USA, and 4) Gion District of Kyoto, Japan. The key findings that carry theoretical and practical significance include the explication of tourists' cognitive biases targeted by various behavioral interventions, and the leveraging of social media as a tool to implement choice architecture that sublety encourages desirable traveler behaviors congruent to each destination among social media-heavy travelers. The applications of this study are relevant to communities struggling with a scenario of overdevelopment due to popularity on social media and are therefore receiving increasing deterioration in quality of life.

Mobile technologies are transforming the ways in which we experience arts and heritage sites, and galleries and museums are facing increased pressure to provide stimulating, alternative technology-based solutions for enriching visitor experiences. Focusing on the opportunities afforded by augmented reality (AR), this paper critiques the role this technology plays in providing visitors the opportunity to experience art and exhibitions through a series of dynamic, small-scale micro-mobilities. We propose that AR creates curated spaces of mobility in galleries and museums and in doing so, visitors become empowered through spaces of agency, autonomy and dwelling as they negotiate these spaces and encounter art through technology mediated forms of wayfinding, interpretation and personal curation. Through negotiated agencies of human and non-human, visitors become emancipated, active agents in a process of co-production. Such positioning is further critiqued as the paper investigates the opportunities afforded by augmented reality to create alternative spaces of connection and interpretation through conceptualisations of dwelling and we suggest technology holds the potential to facilitate an enriched, deeper and more personal connection to that experienced in art gallery and exhibition spaces.

Nature-based tourism offers the opportunity for tourists to see first-hand both wildlife and the conservation efforts of organisations and individuals to protect habitats and species. Whilst recent studies hint that tourism can prompt visitors to provide philanthropic support for conservation, studies to-date have focused on behavioural intentions within specific case studies rather than actual behaviour, thereby limiting generalisability and explanatory scope. Consequently, little is known if and why individuals donate more after nature-based tourism. An online questionnaire, which included both quantitative and qualitive measures, explored key predictors of what triggers tourists to engage in philanthropic behaviour. Through a collaboration with two leading UK adventure travel companies, 924 participants' travel patterns and donation histories were examined to assess the role tourism plays in prompting new donations. Findings confirm, first, that travel to last chance destinations prompts higher instances of new philanthropy compared to other international and domestic trips; second, that other key factors, including the importance of stronger identity with nature and/or first-time visitation, influence new philanthropic support. Alongside the scholarly contributions, this study provides actionable guidance on how to encourage philanthropic behaviour working with both tour-operators and non-profit organisations.

This chapter explores the relationship between the visual and tourism as it has emerged through history. Beginning with the ocularcentric tendencies of the Grand Tour, the chapter works through the emergence of photography to the opportunities afforded to the visual in the virtual environments of the 21st century. Tourism and the visual are inherently interlinked. However, in reflecting upon the position of the visual as the dominant sense within tourism, the chapter moves beyond the visual as primarily concentrated upon within destination marketing and the exoticisation of the other for touristic consumption. In doing so, it critiques the relationship between tourism and the visual as a series of embodied performances and practices, reflects upon the effects of technology and user-generated media in changing the mediascapes and offers a series of methodological insights. In doing so, it confronts significant shifts in producer/consumer relationships and the emergent power dynamics in the construction and consumption of place through the visuals encountered throughout our tourist experiences.

The aim of this paper is to decipher ways of experiencing religiousness through tourist performances, intersecting textual approaches with the essential embodiment and materiality of the tourist world. Exploring the diversity of religious tourists’ practices within the Greek Orthodox context, two dimensions underpinning religious tourist experience are highlighted: institutional performances and unconventional performances. Focussing on the embodied experience and drawing upon theories of performance, the paper critiques the interplays of body and place to re-conceptualise current understanding of the pilgrimage/tourism relationship. In doing so, the paper proposes that tourism and religion are not separate entities but linked through embodied notions of godliness sensed through touristic performances.