Mindfulness as an Approach to Understanding Visitor-Environment Relationships: The Case of Dartmoor National Park

Abstract

The growth of nature-based tourism over the past few decades has increased demand for settings like National Parks and other protected areas, while also prompting questions about the sustainability of such tourism and the importance of conservation measures. This thesis explores how the concept of mindfulness can connect visitors to the environment in UK protected areas. Mindfulness here refers to the cognitive state of an individual who actively processes information, is attentive to the surrounding environment, and is open to new information. Connecting visitors to the environment is important in terms of increasing visitors’ knowledge, fostering appreciation of nature, and promoting responsible environmental behaviour. The concept of mindfulness, derived from psychology, has attracted a great deal of interest in a variety of fields, but it has only been incorporated into tourism research in a relatively limited way. This research seeks to examine mindfulness as an approach to understanding visitor-environment relations in the context of UK National Parks, which have not been previously treated in mindfulness studies in the tourism literature, through a case study of Dartmoor National Park in the South West of England, UK. The research takes into account both the supply side, with attention to stakeholders such as businesses, authorities, and other organisations, and the demand side, with attention to visitors. This is supported by a mixed-methods methodology that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative data. The combination of these perspectives and methods provides crucial information about the ways in which mindfulness can contribute to connecting visitors to conservation issues. For the supply side, interviews (n=19) were conducted with selected key stakeholders. Thematic analysis was utilised to identify and analyse meaningful themes within the dataset. Several important findings emerged, including the ways in which the interviewees make use of the special qualities of Dartmoor to communicate with visitors and to increase visitors’ appreciation of, connection to, and concern for the environment. For the demand side, a visitor survey questionnaire (n=314) was conducted and analysed using several forms of statistical analysis. Several important findings emerged from this analysis, including the effect of emotional place attachment on mindfulness and the effect of mindless on interest in learning and conservation. The results produced suggest the importance of mindfulness to attitudes toward conservation in the context of UK National Parks.