Similarly, in a particularly comprehensive and innovative study of Masoala National Park in Madagascar that included 135 semi-structured interviews and several months of participant observation, Ormsby and Mannle (2006) were able to document impacts on understanding and valuing by both visitors and local residents:
Guides provide a valuable service by explaining the park’s goals to visitors and community residents … The guides also … influence park perceptions through their presentation of park information to visitors and to communities through which visitors pass when trekking in the park. By explaining to local residents [that] tourists are coming ‘to see nature’ and the potential [environmental] benefits from visitors [via a weekly hour-long radio program], guides also play an integral role in ecotourism success through encouraging conservation …The guides also play an essential role in making connections with people in the villages and directing tourists’ money to the peripheral areas of the park. (Ormsby & Mannle, 2006: 279–280)
Finally, Poudel and Nyaupane (2013) undertook to compare the attitudes and self-reported behaviours of 230 visitors on guided and non-guided tours in the Annapurna area of Nepal. While they used only post-visit measures, they did attempt to use rigorous methods including a 20-item ST attitude scale (Choi & Sirakaya, 2006) and a 20-item ST behaviour scale that they developed themselves. Interestingly, while the attitudes and behaviours of visitors on guided tours were significantly different to those on non-guided tours on the majority of the items on both scales, visitors on non-guided tours actually scored more positively on some of the items, particularly the behavioural items. Of course, visitors were not randomly assigned to guided versus non-guided tours, thus this result may simply reflect pre- existing differences between these two groups of visitors.
In a very early study in this vein, Cole (1997) reported that anthropologists acting as tour guides at one of two island case study regions in Indonesia were able not only to outline appropriate behaviour in relation to a small host village but also explain the reasons for the ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’. By comparing tourist behaviour and resident responses in the two case studies, the researcher concluded that a high level of compliance by the tourists and a low level of negative (as well as unexpected positive) sociocultural impacts were due to the presence and actions of the guides. Jensen’s (2010: 624–
625) study cited earlier of local guides in Madagascar also found that guides played an important role in educating tourists about the villages’ traditions, norms, taboos and appropriate behaviours, and that the guides’ presence
‘may have had a reassuring effect on the villagers’.
In a recent study of nature-based guides working on cruise ships along the Kimberley coastline in North Western Australia, Scherrer et al.
(2011) used visitor observations of their guides along with stakeholder interviews to examine the potential impacts of tour guides, tours and visitors on environmental and cultural sites, visitor safety and the visitor experience. They found that the tour guide’s group management skills and level of knowledge strongly influenced the visitor’s behaviour and potential impacts on the environmental and cultural sites and visitor satisfaction.
They suggest that the tour guide plays a key role in operational and visitor management procedures to improve visitor management practices, but because tour guiding is only one of several functions of a crew member on these cruise ships, his or her performance can sometimes fall short of both visitor and management expectations.
Nature-based guides communicate messages about appropriate behaviour and moni- tor on-site behaviour and its impacts on wildlife and habitats. Credit: Kaye Walker (Clipper Cruise Line Tours)
Similarly, research by Armstrong and Weiler (2002), in cooperation with Parks Victoria in Australia, found that guides who are employed by licensed tour operators in national parks could be doing much more in the way of delivering messages relating to sustainability outcomes. Participant observation and audio recording of guide commentary on 20 guided tours found that 17 of the guides delivered 107 messages related to Parks Victoria’s goals. In relation to the length of the tours (many were full-day tours) and the amount of commentary, this is a very small number, with only a handful of messages conveying minimal impact messages. Kayes’
(2005) study of guides in Bocas del Toro, an island destination in Panama, replicated Armstrong and Weiler’s methods and found that most reef- based guides delivered little information and virtually no environmental messages.
Randall and Rollins’ (2009) study of kayak tour guides in a marine national park in Canada found that visitors perceived guides to be performing poorly in communicating environmentally and culturally responsible behaviour in comparison to what they expected. Finally, in their study of 36 tour guides in the Brazilian Amazon, Pereira and Mykletun (2012) found little evidence of guides communicating environmentally responsible messages or acting as cultural brokers. Indeed, they observed guides role-modelling inappropriate behaviours to tourists.
These studies rely on assessing what the guide says or does, or in some cases visitors’ perceptions of these, rather than assessing the actual on-site behavioural responses of visitors. Littlefair (2003: 38) argued that monitoring actual change in visitor behaviour is the ultimate goal of ST as it identifies ‘what people do, rather than what they say they do’. In recent years, a number of studies have evaluated communication interventions designed specifically to foster responsible on-site behaviour. These have tended to focus on the use of self-directed interpretation such as signs (Brown et al., 2010; Curtis et al., 2010; Hughes et al., 2009), although there has been some success in researching the influence on visitors’ on-site behaviours as a result of face-to-face or guided interpretation (Ballantyne et al., 2009; Howard et al., 2001; Littlefair & Buckley, 2008; Marion & Reid, 2007; O’Neill et al., 2004; Widner & Roggenbuck, 2000).
Some of these involve (d) enforcing ST practices via monitoring and regulating problem on-site behaviour and its impacts (also Dimension 2) (Littlefair, 2003; Moscardo, 1998; Roggenbuck, 1992). It is acknowledged that visitors tend to perceive a tour guide as an authority figure, and thus behave in a more responsible way when the tour guide is present (Littlefair, 2003). Indeed, several studies have shown the successful impacts of tour guiding in reducing the level of non-compliant behaviour as well as illegal on-site behaviours that were unintentional (e.g. off-trail hiking, wildlife feeding and littering) (Howard et al., 2001; Littlefair, 2003; Orams & Hill,
1998; Scherrer et al., 2011; for further reviews, see Marion & Reid, 2007 and Skibins et al., 2012). While many of these studies have relied on visitors’
self-reports of how guiding impacted their behavioural intention or actual behaviour, a few have actually observed on-site behaviour such as reducing damaging behaviour on coral reefs by divers (Medio et al., 1997), reducing removal of petrified wood (Widner & Roggenbuck, 2000), reducing noise, reducing off-track walking and increasing pro-environmental behaviour such as picking up other people’s litter (Littlefair & Buckley, 2008).
A more complex research issue is to go from measuring visitors’ on-site behaviours to assessing the impacts or consequences of visitors’ on-site actions or non-actions on sustainability, since the impacts can be cumulative and long term. Boren et al. (2007), however, through observation and comparisons with a control group who were not guided, were able to conclude that the presence of a guide both during land-based seal-viewing and swim-with-seal programmes had a significant impact on reducing both the non-compliant behaviour of the tourist and avoidance behaviours of seals.