Tourism and Recreation in New Zealand's Natural Environment

Last updated: May 2008

This report presents a literature review and synthesis of published research about tourism and recreation in New Zealand’s natural environment.

Reports

This report was commissioned by the Ministry of Tourism on behalf of the Tourism Conservation Forum. Kay Booth and Associates undertook the work.

The study had three objectives:

To define the scope of tourism/recreation/environment research (Part 1 of this report).
To provide a state-of-knowledge synthesis of research on tourism and recreation in the New Zealand natural environment, identifying what is known and highlighting research gaps (Part 2 of this report).
To prepare a bibliography of published literature (1990 to mid-2006), so existing research is known and may be accessed (Part 3 of this report).

Scope

The scope of research about tourism and recreation in the natural environment is broadly defined to encapsulate publications that cover commercial and non-commercial recreation and tourism activities which are dependent upon the countryside, protected areas, the coast and waterways, marine areas, natural features and/or species.

The Bibliography provides a comprehensive catalogue of research publications relevant to this topic. The method employed to locate and select publications is described so that it may be replicated. The Research Synthesis analyses this collective of publications by research theme, explaining research in terms of its scope and type, areas of concentration, research source (researchers, scientific discipline and funders) and key research findings (where sufficient material exists).

Conclusions

Conclusions drawn about this collective of research effort are that there is:

A large volume of research (602 publications are recorded, from 1990 to mid-2006).
Greater breadth than depth of study.
Multiple and varied areas of investigation (24 themes are identified within the literature).
A wide variety of disciplines, with little integration across disciplines.
A lack of consistency in methods, which inhibits comparability and trends analysis.
A concentration of site- and time-specific studies, with little longitudinal research.
Areas of research concentration surrounding tourism/recreation impacts, research within protected natural areas (especially national parks) and marine mammal viewing.
Many research gaps.
A dominance of university-based research, particularly post-graduate student theses.
Observations from the literature review and research synthesis are made that are pertinent to the proposed Tourism Research Strategy.

These include the need for:

clear research priorities, a staged research programme, the use of planning frameworks to guide and link research and management responses, encouragement of inter-disciplinary studies, standardisation of method, derivation of a knowledge framework to organise the Research Strategy and future research, and enhanced communication between researchers and research users, especially with respect to student research.

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