Abstracts for Session 19

Sustainable tourism in rural landscapes of the Anthropocene

 

 

Title: Public participation GIS in sustainable tourism planning; experiences from Sweden and Finland

Authors: Beatrice Waleghwa, Tobias Heldt and Vierikko Kati

Affiliation: Dalarna University, Mid-Sweden University

 

The purpose of this paper is to discuss challenges and opportunities in using Public participation GIS (PPGIS) in planning at a tourism destination located in a rural context. The past decades' development in technology has opened the possibility for using digital tools such as PPGIS. PPGIS is the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to broaden public engagement in planning and management practices. PPGIS usage in various planning contexts is well documented, however more research is needed on PPGIS usability for planning at tourism destinations located in remote areas of developed countries. This paper uses two case areas with similar characteristics, Sälenfjällen, Sweden, and Kymenlaakso, Finland to contrast and compare the PPGIS use in addressing mobility challenges, respectively. Both Sälenfjällen and Kymenlaakso share a key feature for being prominent tourist destinations located in remote areas that experience mobility challenges. For the destinations to develop sustainably, the mobility issues ought to be addressed for instance through planning conducted to ensure the development of tourism that includes wider societal, economic, and environmental goals. In both studies, the PPGIS method was implemented through surveys shared to visitors where the aim was to collect their perceptions on transport and mobility challenges that could inform destination management and planning.  Findings from the studies indicate that the PPGIS adds to the planning process by improving the collection of spatially explicit data. However, there are still challenges in areas like data collection, sampling, and quality of the data gathered from the public and its implementation in planning. The study adds to a growing literature exploring the use of PPGIS in the field of tourism and recreation and is to our knowledge among the first to use it in a comparative tourism-transport context in the Nordic peripheries.   

 

Keywords: Sustainable tourism development, tourism planning, Nordic peripheries, PPGIS, Sweden, Finland

 

 

Title: A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Hashtags: Exploring Digital Footprints to Track the Behavioural Patterns of Rural Rivers Visitors in the Anthropocene 

Authors: Arash Akhshik, Marianna Strzelecka, Joanna Tusznio, and Małgorzata Grodzińska-Jurczak

Affiliation: Jagiellonian University

 

The climatic changes and their immediate impact on hydrological regimes primarily affect communities living adjacent to rivers as well as nature-lovers consuming these ever-increasing popular sites for various leisure activities such as fishing, birdwatching, swimming, etc. particularly in rural areas. Besides, the disturbed natural habitats are reportedly changing peoples’ perceptual and emotional bonds with nature, therefore, to evade the extemporization in climate action and to cultivate these unmarred emotions fabricated by the Anthropocene, our study will shed light into how many, what, where and with whom people engage in activities nearby rural rivers and which emotions accompany those experiences. Unveiling the patterns of behaviours proximate to the river and emotions they generate, provides unprecedented insight into the better management of these areas.

To proceed, electronic traces such as social media (e.g. Instagram) are used as imperative spatial-temporal insight that provide the data for the study. The massive volume of big datasets demands an application of methodological tool such as machine learning (ML) techniques to train, test and categorize the data. We perform the analysis for the European Union Riverscapes. 

Social media geotagged photos provide unprecedented insight to better manage the rural river sites. The findings will ease the conceptualization of values, emotions and leisure practices in proximity to rivers in the Anthropocene.

 

 

Title: Traces of sled dog presence and movement in tourist landscapes

Author: Mikko Äijälä 

Affiliation: University of Lapland

 

In theorisations on tourist landscapes the phenomenon has mainly been seen as an interrelation of tourism places, people, practices, and mediators. The active role of humans, such as tourists and tourism workers, in doing landscapes is highlighted. The lively presence of animals in tourist landscapes can be culturally, politically and economically significant but their presence is often overlooked or only partially acknowledged amidst a wider blindness to the agencies of nature. I mainly refer to Ingold’s notion of meshwork–distinctive from network–which captures the living complexity of landscapes to consider them as intersecting flows of agency in which humans and non-humans carry on along the lines of their relationship. 

Appreciating the living complexity of the landscapes requires to turn attention to issues of embodiment, performance, skill and affect as relational forces and competencies. I capture and evoke the traces of the relationality through mobile video ethnography with action camera as a part of fieldwork conducted in a sled dog kennel in Finnish Lapland. My approach seeks to understand the kennel and related activities as mutually constituted, and to appreciate how the dogs co-construct patterns of the lived (rural) landscape through their agencies. The labour that sled dogs do in the routes, practices and performances of mushing activities highlight how movement and mobility of animals creates and alters the specific landscape–tourism nexus. I endeavour here to provide a description of the richness and significance of the small and everyday practices through which sled dog presences fold into local landscape.

 

 

Title: Exploring the relationship between wind farms and people-place bonds in rural Sweden- narratives from Åby-Alebo Wind Park in Mönsterås. 

Authors: Yvonne Laura Goudriaan, Marianna Strzeleckaa, and Solene Prince

Affiliation: Linnaeus University

 

A transition to renewable energy (RE) systems is necessary to ensure humanity’s sustainable future. While decarbonizing economies through energy transitions towards RET is a demanding endeavor, it has become a controversial topic. The increasing RE infrastructure development significantly alters rural landscapes. There are also concerns over the changing rural landscape because employing RETs impacts the aesthetics and perceived naturalness of landscapes, reducing the attractiveness of such landscape for tourism and recreation. The physical elements and aesthetic properties of landscapes are integral to the visitor experience as they provoke emotions and shape people’s interactions with and their experiences in those landscapes. 

The expansion of renewable energy technologies (RETs) reshapes people’s bonds with the place in rural areas.  Introducing RE infrastructures in rural landscapes raises concerns about the transformation of people’s bonds with rural places. In this presentation, we explore these concerns by looking into people-place bonds in Mönsterås, Sweden, where Åby-Alebo Wind Park is located. The presentation is based on the study of two local groups; landowners and recreationists. We report on (i) how place attachment evolves along with the development of RE; (ii) how residents bond with places transformed by RE infrastructure; and (iii) the relational nature of people-place bonds by examining the social, practical, and temporal dimensions of place attachment.

 

 

Title: Tensions in the landscapes of the Anthropocene: Presentation of the project ‘Wind power establishment and experience values in natural areas’

Authors: Solène Prince and Tatiana Chekalina

Affiliation: ETOUR, Mid-Sweden University

 

Wind power is increasingly common in rural areas. The development of wind power plants in rural areas can cause tensions amongst different interest groups. On one side, their development helps fulfill goals of sustainability by offering renewable energy. Their development can generate economic growth. On the other side, the presence of wind mills in rural landscapes compromises images of natural areas as peaceful and untouched. In the north of Sweden, the planned development of wind power is particularly controversial. We present the project 'Wind power establishment and experience values in natural areas', financed by Sweden’s energy authority and carried out at the European Tourism Research Institute, Mid-Sweden University. The aim of the project is to enhance research methods and strategies for transparent and balanced decision-making in the development of wind power. We focus on the juncture between wind power development, outdoor recreation, tourism and the preservation of cultural environments. The research team will explore people’s attitudes towards the impact of wind power on the landscape and the attractiveness of natural areas in different case study areas. Our research includes stakeholder workshops, in-depth qualitative interviews and surveying as we seek to base our conclusions in collaboration with local and regional stakeholders, the tourism industry and the wind power industry. The project will be in its early stage in autumn 2021, but it plans to deliver an assessment tool for experience values and decision-making strategies for wind power development. In this session, we seek to network with researchers working on similar topics.