A User-Generated Content Analysis of Tourists at Wildlife Tourism Attractions

Two recent tourism trends are the growing wildlife tourism subsector of nature-based tourism and the increased use of social media in both marketing and for tourists to share their experiences. Until recently, the connection between social media and wildlife tourism remained understudied, and tourist behavior on Instagram after visiting wildlife tourism attractions (WTAs) remains unstudied. Some researchers call for more tourism research using social media data created by tourists, called user-generated content (UGC), to understand them. This netnographic study examines tourists who visited a range of WTAs by analyzing their post-visit photos and captions on Instagram through the lens of involvement theory to evaluate the strength of their connection to wildlife and conservation. Previous research has indicated that wildlife tourism can have extraordinary benefits to conservation and communities, but some WTAs, some of which are photo-prop tourism attractions where animals are handed over to tourists for selfies, have negative impacts on individual animals and species due to illegal sourcing, improper care, human interaction, and habituation. Findings from this study suggest that WTAs with good or excellent conservation and welfare practices lead to more highly involved tourists, ultimately benefitting community investment, animal welfare, and conservation efforts via the flow of tourist dollars and spread of information on social media, the tourist changing their behavior, or all of the aforementioned. Conversely, WTAs with negative conservation and welfare practices do not foster the same level of tourist involvement as their counterparts, often leading to more anthropocentric Instagram posts that do not spread conservation messaging or imply environmental behavior change. The implications from this research suggest that wildlife tourism attraction management practices should focus on conservation and welfare for the improvement of conservation efforts via policies, enforcement, larger governing bodies or organizations advocating or taking action, and future research on the potential impact COVID-19 had on the wildlife tourism industry.