Cross-Cultural Analysis of Community Participation in Ecotourism

Amanda Stronza博士将与研究生Joseph E. Mbaaiwa、Fernanda de Vasconcellos Pegas和Carter A. Hunt一起，在秘鲁、博茨瓦纳、巴西和尼加拉瓜四个农村社区进行生态旅游对当地影响的比较研究。研究人员将讨论有关本地和国际市场对人与环境相互作用影响的社会科学辩论。他们还将产生基于经验的分析，利用描述性案例研究的结果来建立概括的理论，并评估生态旅游作为一种基于市场的保护和发展工具的效用。这项研究建立在对秘鲁亚马逊地区一个土著拥有的生态旅游小屋进行了十年研究的基础上。在这种情况下，生态旅游产生了矛盾的影响。它强化了管理公共资源的地方机构，但也导致了对自然资源的扩大开采和新的利润冲突。研究人员推测，生态旅游的社区管理对于建立当地的保护和发展机构尤其重要。之所以选择这四个重点社区，是因为它们都经历了生态旅游的直接成本和收益，但对生态旅游业务的决策控制和所有权水平不同。该小组将在每个地点进行为期六个月的人种学实地研究。他们将进行访谈、焦点小组讨论和参与者观察，以评估社区参与生态旅游及其对经济、资源利用和保护的影响，以及对福祉的总体看法。他们还将对社区居民进行分层抽样调查。所有四个案例的数据将结合起来进行系统比较。预测生态旅游保护结果的因果条件将使用定性比较分析进行评估。还将在社区内部和社区之间进行家庭和个人层面的比较。这项研究很重要，因为它将为有关市场对人与环境相互作用影响的人类学理论做出贡献。具体地说，它将使人们更好地了解市场激励与地方机构相互作用的条件，以便为保护采取集体行动。从实践的角度来看，该研究将有助于制定更好的政策，以确保社区从生态旅游中获得社会、经济和环境效益。这项研究具有创新性，因为它将使用人种学方法来评估与生态旅游相关的社会和文化变化（不仅仅是经济变化），特别是与保护伦理和资源管理制度有关的变化。研究结果将使自然资源保护主义者、发展实践者、旅游经营者和当地社区领导人更清楚地了解生态旅游在实现发展目标的同时保护环境的机制。最后，这项研究将促进国际研究合作，并将有助于三名研究生的博士培养。

Dr. Amanda Stronza, along with graduate students Joseph E. Mbaaiwa, Fernanda de Vasconcellos Pegas, and Carter A. Hunt, will undertake comparative research on the local effects of ecotourism in four rural communities in Peru, Botswana, Brazil, and Nicaragua. The researchers will address social science debates about the influence of local and international markets on human-environment interactions. They also will produce empirically grounded analyses that use the findings of descriptive case studies to build generalizing theory and evaluate the utility of ecotourism as a market-based tool for conservation and development. The research builds on a ten-year study of an indigenous-owned ecotourism lodge in the Peruvian Amazon. In that case, ecotourism has had contradictory effects. It has fortified local institutions for managing common pool resources, but it has also led to expanded exploitation of natural resources and new conflicts over profits. The researchers hypothesize that community management of ecotourism is especially important for building local institutions for conservation and development. The four focal communities in this study were chosen because they all experience direct costs and benefits from ecotourism, but differ in their levels of control over decision-making and ownership of ecotourism operations. The team will conduct six months of ethnographic field research in each site. They will carry out interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observation to assess community participation in ecotourism and its effects the economy, resource use and conservation, and overall perceptions of well being. They also will conduct surveys of stratified samples of community residents. The data from all four cases will be combined to conduct systematic comparisons. Causal conditions for predicting conservation outcomes from ecotourism will be assessed using Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Comparisons will also be made within and across communities at the level of households and individuals.The study is important because it will contribute to anthropological theory about the influence of the market on human-environment interactions. Specifically, it will generate better understanding of conditions under which market incentives interact with local institutions to enable collective action for conservation. From a practical perspective, the research will lead to better policy for ensuring that communities benefit socially, economically, and environmentally from ecotourism. The study is innovative because it will use ethnographic approaches to evaluate social and cultural changes associated with ecotourism (not just economic ones), especially as they relate to conservation ethics and institutions for resource management. The results of the research will allow conservationists, development practitioners, tour operators, and local community leaders to understand more clearly the mechanisms by which ecotourism meets development goals while also protecting the environment. Finally, the research will foster international research collaboration and will contribute to the doctoral training of three graduate students.