Suchergebnisse

Tourism at historic religious sites requires balancing the needs of historic preservation, the tourist experience, and community use of the site. The sacredness of these places is defined by the behaviors that occur there, the experience of users and visitors, and the meanings associated with the place by various groups. This research examines the tourist experience and perception of sacredness by Western tourists at Thai Buddhist sites. The tourist experience related to perceived authenticity, the aesthetics of the place, and its natural features, and the perceived sacredness related to the continued religious use of the site, presence of religious symbols, and historic preservation. Tourists and tourist-related commercial activities were the main detractors of the tourist experience and perceived sacredness.

Brownfields have the potential to be reused as nature preserves or recreation areas. This reuse depends on the public's perceptions of risk and their willingness to support the new uses of the sites. This study examines attitudes about the reuse of large coastal brownfields from local and nonlocal students and the public. The sites include the buffer area surrounding a nuclear power plant, an area contaminated by a chemical spill, and a ranch (which was used as a control site). The results show that all the samples are more supportive of the establishment of nature preserves with human access than either nature preserves without access or developed recreation areas. Limits on human access to the sites are more acceptable for the contaminated sites and more acceptable to the nonlocal samples.

In the future, virtual reality technology will allow people to experience nature in a simulated environment—virtual nature. This article examines the implications of the availability of virtual nature experiences in three research studies. The first study showed that people would be interested in owning a virtual nature system and have a variety of expected uses for it. The second study showed that the commercial media's presentation of nature tends to cause people to devalue their emotional experience of local natural areas. The third study showed that one of the effects of simulated nature experiences is to increase support for the preservation of national parks and forests, but it decreases support for the acquisition and preservation of local natural areas. Overall, these results suggest some of the dangers of the increasing use of information technology to simulate environments for people to experience. Widespread use of virtual nature could reduce support for the preservation of local natural environments, and these environments play a key role in the global ecology.

The viability of rural logging communities in the Northwest is threatened. Even with sustainable forest management, financial and technological changes are decreasing the employment opportunities in rural communities. The contribution of the logging industry to local economies has been decreasing due to timber competition from other regions, technological change, and the spotted owl controversy. This study reports on the attitudes of people involved in the economic development of the rural Northwest who attended regional economic development conferences held in 1991 and 1992. The participants at each conference rated the economic situation of the region as poor, and primarily blamed federal regulations for their current economic problems. They recognized the need to develop a diversified rural economy and believed the region's greatest economic assets were its environmental quality and quality of life. Attendance at the first regional economic development conference resulted in short-term improvement in attitudes about the future of the rural areas.

Although research has examined differences in people's responses to natural versus technologically caused disasters, research has not examined the differences in people's attitudes toward disasters in natural versus built environments. This study examined the effects of the type of environment and awareness of the problem on attitudes toward the cleanup of oil spills. The results showed that the type of environment did not affect ratings of the importance of the environmental problem or how it should be cleaned up. However, people were more concerned about the environmental and community impacts of the cleanup process in the built environment. Awareness of the problem was a more important factor than type of environment for understanding attitudes toward the oil spill cleanup. People who were more aware of the oil spills viewed the problems as more important and were more concerned that the environments be returned to their previous states.