Doctoral Dissertation Research: Influence of Moral Engagement on Decision-Making, Management, and Risk to Wildlife in Protected Areas

Understanding human behaviors in wildlife tourism settings is essential to ensuring the well-being of wildlife, protected areas, and individuals whose livelihood depends on them. Despite tour guides’ significant influence as ambassadors, educators, and role models for conservation behaviors, their potential for minimizing the negative impacts of tourism is rarely acknowledged, leveraged, or studied. Social science research that aims to improve wildlife tourism management and decision-making remains urgently needed. To address this need, the current research is designed to generate knowledge about how the interfacing moral engagement of guides and tourists influences risks caused by their behaviors in the human-wildlife contact zone. Given the biodiversity conservation challenges faced across the planet, the current research is well-poised to provide generalizable insights into the underpinnings of decision-making and management of tourist behaviors during wildlife tourism activities in protected areas. Linking theory on ethical decision-making process of wildlife tour guides and wildlife tourists, and their associated behaviors during tourism activities, this research is guided by the following overarching question: how does moral engagement influence the decision-making and management of risk among tour guides and tourists on wildlife tourism game drives? More specific research questions and hypotheses assess: 1) the pre-contact zone conservation values and expectations that tourists and guides hold; 2) the expected and actual situational characteristics of game drives; 3) the interpersonal dynamics between tourists and guides during tourism activities; 4) the mediator variables that influence the valence of moral engagement of tourists and guides during tour activities; and 5) the prevalence of unsustainable behavior decisions during tour activities. The rigorous mixed methods analysis plan is both qualitative and quantitative in nature and tests a dual-process model of moral engagement and its influence on decision-making and management of wildlife tourism. The resulting understanding of complex interpersonal dynamics in wildlife tourism settings will be of value to research undertaken in tourism-dependent protected areas of high biodiversity value around the globe. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.