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Disconnection in nature-based tourism experiences: an actor-network theory approach
Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1763-140x
Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4278-3117
2024 (English)In: Annals of Leisure Research, ISSN 1174-5398, Vol. 27, no 4, p. 525-542Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Recent studies question whether ubiquitous connectivity via mobiles represents an enhancer and facilitator in nature-based tourism experiences or a potential destructor to disconnect from. We argue that extant research approaches cannot fully grasp the complexity of the connectivity-disconnection dilemma, specifically how tourists appropriate, reinterpret, reshape, and negotiate with meanings inscribed in mobiles and how such negotiations link to valuations of nature-based experiences. This research adopts an interpretivist approach and uses actor-network theory to investigate negotiations of connectivity and their experiential meanings through field interviews in Fulufjället National Park, Sweden. Results reveal translations of social connectivity, facilitation of information and orientation as thematic cores of tourists’ embodiments of mobile connectivity. Results also show how the comprehensive tourismscape where such embodiments find meaning contributes to tourists’ definitions of disconnection. Such definitions comprise human and non-human actors on site, off site, and cannot be exhausted by essentialist dualisms between being plugged and unplugged.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Informa UK Limited , 2024. Vol. 27, no 4, p. 525-542
Keywords [en]
disconnection, actor-network theory, nature-based tourism, digital-free travel, national parks, Sweden
National Category
Human Aspects of ICT
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-48158DOI: 10.1080/11745398.2022.2150665Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85143308440OAI: oai:DiVA.org:miun-48158DiVA, id: diva2:1751530
Available from: 2023-04-18 Created: 2023-04-18 Last updated: 2024-09-18Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Digital technocultures in Nature-based tourism
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Digital technocultures in Nature-based tourism
2023 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

This thesis investigates the influences of digital technologies on nature-based tourism (NBT) experiences. I acknowledge that the holistic digitalization of human lives increasingly impacts nature-based tourism. Particularly, I argue that it impacts tourists’ experiential valuation of nature, as well as tourists themselves as experiencers of nature in NBT in ways that need to be further understood.Following contemporary consumer-dominant perspectives on tourism experiences, I argue that tourists’ multi-dimensional valuation of experiences depends greatly on ex-situ factors that exist outside service encounters in NBT and within digitally networked lifeworld experienced by tourists, which informs how they value themselves and what they experience. However, such lifeworlds are poorly acknowledged in research on NBT experiences. Building on consumer culture theory, I argue that NBT tourists are cultural agents, and their NBT experiences are highly affected by how their lifeworlds are ingrained in marketplace cultures that discipline what is valuable and experienced in NBT. Such marketplace cultures, which are becoming increasingly digital and technological, can be conceptualized as digital technocultures. More than simply enhancing experiences, as extant literature suggests, digital technology provides lifestyle scripts, ideologies, identity myths, symbolic universes, and stories associated with the everyday, tourism, and consumption of nature. The latter are powerful actors in shaping consumers’ meaning making, sensescapes, emotions, behaviors, and ultimately experience valuations of nature in NBT. Across the four papers and the additional discussion that compose it, this thesis investigates how digital technocultures shape the identity of tourist experiencers in NBT and how they impact the valuation of nature in NBT. The thesis adopts a mix of novel, in-depth, thick, and interpretive methodologies to gain such knowledge. Findings offer thick consumer knowledge and a high-level consumer insight into NBT tourists. In digital technocultures, NBT tourists and their experiences of nature are contested among different digital and disconnected selves. Tourists appropriate digital technocultures and NBT according to identity projects that aim to assemble valued digital “experiencers” and at taking part in valued in e-tribes reflecting them in one’s lifeworld. At the same time, tourists negotiate digital technocultures disciplining their lifeworlds in order to build a valued escapist, liberated and disconnected Self in nature. Moreover, digital technocultures discipline, abstract, and extremify specific aspects of nature. These are sought, desired, imagined, and experienced as digital hyperrealities in NBT. This thesis explores the implications of digital technocultures of experience for NBT, which have so far been insufficiently acknowledged.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sundsvall: Mid Sweden University, 2023. p. 251
Series
Mid Sweden University doctoral thesis, ISSN 1652-893X ; 389
Keywords
Nature-based tourism, digital technology, tourism experience, consumer culture, technoculture, extended self
National Category
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-48159 (URN)978-91-89786-15-8 (ISBN)
Public defence
2023-05-26, Kunskapens väg 8, Östersund, 10:15 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Note

Vid tidpunkten för disputationen var följande delarbete opublicerat: delarbete 4 manuskript.

At the time of the doctoral defence the following paper was unpublished: paper 4 in manuscript.

Available from: 2023-04-19 Created: 2023-04-18 Last updated: 2023-04-19Bibliographically approved

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Conti, Eugenio

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