Cross-Cultural Analysis of Community Participation in Ecotourism

阿曼达·斯特龙扎博士将与研究生约瑟夫·E·姆拜瓦、费尔南达·德·瓦斯康塞洛斯·佩加斯和卡特·A·亨特在秘鲁、博茨瓦纳、巴西和尼加拉瓜的四个农村社区开展生态旅游对当地影响的比较研究。研究人员将就当地和国际市场对人与环境互动的影响展开社会科学辩论。它们还将产生以经验为基础的分析，利用描述性案例研究的结果来建立泛化理论，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。这项研究是基于对秘鲁亚马逊地区一家原住民拥有的生态旅游小屋进行的为期十年的研究。在这种情况下，生态旅游产生了相互矛盾的影响。它加强了地方机构对公共资源的管理，但也导致了自然资源开采的扩大和新的利润冲突。研究人员假设，生态旅游的社区管理对于建立当地的保护和发展机构特别重要。本研究中的四个重点社区之所以被选中，是因为它们都经历了生态旅游的直接成本和收益，但在对生态旅游业务的决策和所有权的控制程度上存在差异。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、资源使用和保护以及整体幸福感的影响。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在一起，进行系统的比较。将使用定性比较分析来评估预测生态旅游保护结果的因果条件。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于人类学关于市场对人与环境相互作用的影响的理论。具体地说，它将使人们更好地了解市场激励与当地机构相互作用的条件，以便为保护而采取集体行动。从实践的角度来看，这项研究将导致制定更好的政策，确保社区从生态旅游中获得社会、经济和环境方面的好处。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)，特别是当它们与保护伦理和资源管理机构有关时。研究结果将使自然资源保护者、发展从业者、旅游经营者和当地社区领导人更清楚地了解生态旅游在满足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，并将为三名研究生的博士培训做出贡献。

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.