Comparing potential agritourists’ assessment of highly authentic and highly appealing agricultural landscape features
There has been ample discussion about
the fluidity and complexity of authenticity, as well as about the construct’s social
and cultural relativity. This debate, termed by Jafar Jafari as the “dilemma of authenticity”, centers on conflicting stances about the ways authenticity might influence tourist behavior. On one hand, some maintain that existential
authenticity is an implicit selling point of tourism experiences. Further, for western tourists, authenticity has been claimed to be
a key factor affecting tourist’s experiences and destination choices. Others, however, contend that
people no longer value authenticity and/or are suspicious of its commercial
purposes. From those perspectives, the authentic
and inauthentic are no longer symmetrical counter-concepts.
Understanding tourists’ perceptions of what is authentic and appealing is of the utmost importance to businesses and destinations. Owners of small working lands are in special need of this knowledge because they are often promised that their farmland’s unadulterated landscapes are appealing to visitors and could be leveraged to generate additional income from agritourism. However, there has been very little research examining which agricultural landscape features are perceived as authentic and appealing by potential visitors. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to explore which agricultural landscape features are perceived as authentic, and which are perceived as appealing for a future agritourism experience.
This study used two separate between-subjects experiments to cross-validate the results: The first experiment used Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) technology in a controlled laboratory. IVE technology involves displaying photorealistic virtual environments to research participants via an Oculus Rift headset in a controlled lab setting (Figure 1). The second experiment was delivered via Amazon’s online marketplace, Mechanical Turk. In both experiments, participants were asked to identify the elements of the landscape which they believed to make it “most authentic”, as well as those they believed make it “most appealing” as a tourism destination. All points identified by participants were classified into three ecosystem service types (Regulating and Maintenance, Provisioning, Cultural and Social) following the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services framework. Figure 2 illustrates a heat map created by the frequency of participants' clicks, as well as an example of agricultural landscape image and its spatial classification as regulating and maintenance in green, provisioning in yellow, and cultural and social in red.
Two-sample t-tests were
used to identify significant differences between the number of landscape features
identified as highly authentic and identified as highly appealing across each
of the three ecosystem service types. Across both experiments, the results
indicate that social and cultural landscape elements were significantly more
likely to be identified as highly authentic landscape features than they were
to be identified as highly appealing features. The experiment administered via
the online marketplace also revealed that regulating and maintenance ecosystem
services were significantly more likely to be identified as highly authentic
landscape features than they were to be identified as highly appealing
features.
The findings of this study suggest that the authenticity of an agricultural landscape is only partially related to its appeal to potential agritourists. We used new methods and a convenient sample in a laboratory environment; therefore we plan to continue this line of research in an attempt to help agripreneurs better understand their visitors. If you have questions or contributions to this discussion, please contact us and post your comments in this blog.
Author: Shahab Nazariadli, doctoral student, Equitable and Sustainable Development, NC State
This study bridges scholarship pursued by teams in NC State's Smith Lab, the Agritourism and Societal Well-being Lab, and, of course, the People-First Tourism Lab.
Excited to read more about it. Following question came to my mind after reading your findings.
ReplyDeleteHow to promote a tourism industry that protects actual ways of life and eliminates cultural stereotypes that foster animosities among places.
Dear Shahab Nazari,
ReplyDeleteWhat you are trying to do is to compare the touristic appeal between "purely authentic" and something that is adapted for the tourist tastes. One brilliant article on the topic by Dr. Yu Wang (PhD Duke) concerns Bed & Breakfast homes in the UNESCO world Heritage site of Lijiang, Yunnan {my wife and I visited her there while she was doing the research].
It's a good model for such a project. Good luck,
Nelson Graburn, Prof Emeritus
Wang, Y. (2007). Customized authenticity begins at home. Annals of Tourism Research 34(3):789-804
. (2007, March).
Dear Shabab
ReplyDeleteAs much as the term authenticity may be confounding and confounded ( see e.g., http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1QLJqaZ3E6vnc) as much may be the notions of authentic and appealing be confounding in your experiment. You are using highly modified natural spaces but do not seem to give any reference as to what is authentic (e.g., is the farmhouse authentic for the US mid-west or Japan? Iow, is the farmhouse appealing because it is authentic or is it appealing because people like farmhouses – authenticity is less relevant?). Which sort of authenticity is being referenced – object or existential? What do respondents consider as appealing in general and in modified natural landscapes? – a lot of variables to be calibrated first, I suppose, before you can establish any meaningful correlations. Juergen
Juergen Gnoth (juergen.gnoth@otago.ac.nz)
Shahab,
ReplyDeleteThere was a really interesting landscape categorisation project done
by colleagues in the Netherlands about 4 or maybe 5 years ago . . . I
have no idea who it was or what university, but I remember seeing a
presentation at a conference - possibly an ATLAS one . . . where they
were mapping perceptions of landscape . . . it MIGHT fit in with
yours.
ALSO, I edited a chapter on rural housing done in Hungary - see attached.
Kevin Griffin
Dublin, Ireland
Dear Shahab
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting project. I think one of the problems is that visitors do not really know what is actually 'authentic' but they generally know what they like! If you give them too much authenticity (i.e. they have to sleep on a cold, hard, wet floor, eat strange and unfamiliar foods, sit in darkness with no electricity), they may not find this very appealing, but this may be authentic rural living in some places. I also think that non-rural tourists (those who have never lived in the countryside) have an over-romanticised view of what farm life is all about. This means that they may have a very cozy and not very realistic notion of what living and working on a farm means (forgetting the early morning starts at 4am, harsh weather conditions, little rest and high levels of depression and alcoholism that many farmers suffer from). It's not to say that you cannot provide visitors with an appealing stay on a farm, especially one which is still practising farming in the way that it has been done for generations (i.e. authentic), but the degree to which visitors will a) want to engage with the really authentic practices which are not that appealing, and b) gain any kind of existential authenticity from it (arguably only possible if they live and work like the locals for a while), is debatable. But it certainly makes your project more interesting if you can ask them maybe about their pre-conceptions of rural and farm life, give them an 'authentic' experience, and see how appealing they really find it!
Best wishes
Melanie
Dr Melanie Smith
Associate Professor and Researcher
School of Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality
BKF University of Applied Sciences
1-9 Nagy Lajos Kiraly Utja
Budapest
Hungary
Tel: 0036 204624443
Shahab: It is always exciting to be on the less-traveled research roads. While rural and agritourism are not new study trains, still many plots remain to be mapped, plowed, and irrigated. Your research questions are refreshing and penetrating, promising unearthing new finds. In particular, your “authenticity” and “appealing” research questions are challenging, leading you to many byways and sideways in order to gather perspectives needed to properly frame and contextualize the subject.
ReplyDeleteTo begin with, whose “authenticity”? Urban visitors, US citizens, older people, well-seasoned travelers, highly educated individuals…? To play with words, “authenticity is in the eyes of the beholder”. And the same can be said about your “appealing” question. Issues, factors, and perspectives to consider in respect to your topics are many and obviously you do not want to handle them all.
As you move forward, consider sharpening your focus while limiting its questions. Arm yourself with the emic and etic perspectives. Consider to inconspicuously join a number of the tours and trips that your subjects take. During these “fieldtrips” carry on conversations with the visitors. On these outings, experience the “authenticity” and “appealing” for yourself—while being mindful if you are seeing things through your etic or emic eyes.
Shahab, again, exploration is always exciting, mind opening. You and other PhD students should not get upset if suddenly or unexpectedly your feet get muddy in the freshly plowed and irrigated “rural” fields. Nor should you get irritated if at times you are lost. Soon you will collect yourself, finding your way out and around, discovering and mapping the field,…... and—suddenly—you have arrived. Bon voyage.
Jafar Jafari jafari@uwstout.edu
University of Wisconsin-Stout, USA
Tel +1715 529-7115
Universidade do Algarve, Portugal
Professor Catedrático
Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain
Doctor honoris causa +34 659 -754559
Founding Editor Annals of Tourism Research
Chief Editor Tourism Social Science Series
Co-Editor Bridging Tourism Theory and Practice
Co-Editor Encyclopedia of Tourism
Founding President The Academy
President The t-Forum
Here I want to express my highest regards and gratitude to all whom their comments and insights are always highly valued. A number of critiques have been made which were dominantly drawn on the constructivist approach implying that the authenticity would be grasped based on the personal and social preferences, beliefs, stereotyped images, nostalgia, expectations, knowledge and so forth. I explicitly admit the constructivism approach which has made the nature of knowledge fluid and pluralistic. To date because of time and budget constraints our project has been focused on the objectivism/realism/modernism point of view which has been refuted by some scholars (I.e. Wang & Reisinger) and brought into reconsideration by others (I.e. Belhasen & Caton).
ReplyDeleteBasically this experiment was laid on the uncertain association of appeal/attraction of a place to its authenticity from the local’s perspective in natural settings. For this, the next step for this project is set out to integrate the subjectivism into the project: The equipment would be brought into the downtown shopping malls and social events and next to the farmlands to assess the extent demographics would possibly implicate the potential tourist and farmland owner’s perception of authenticity. Additionally it would try to see if the estimated differentials are reconcilable or not. It is noteworthy to spotlight the scarce empirical research of the ‘authenticity effect’ on the natural settings from the modernism, constructivism and post modernism points of view as the literature is mostly grounded in theory in this context.
In the end I would like to emphasize that our project and team members, have majorly focused on the participatory action and ethnography research and so as a maxim whenever related, do not depend on the laboratory neat analysis of the subjects whilst conversely bring the laboratory into the field. As mentioned by Professor Jafari, appeal and authenticity could be discerned from the ‘eye of the beholder’ signaling its subjective nature again, questioning the ontological basis of the term. It should be declared that this uncertainty has urged and infuriated some thinkers (I.e. Kuhn) to prohibit counterparts to stop contemplating and developing knowledge on this slippery concept because it has not yet become a ‘black box’. My motive however is not to unearth an absolute meaning of the authenticity but was to examine its multiple dimensions in natural setting for the success of agritourism in regional/context-based area.
Once again thank you for all your care and insight into our project. We look forward for receiving further inputs about the upcoming stages of the project.
I guess these things have a way of growth and also certainly we can take care of a lot tour bus from new york to niagara falls makes sense to me in the maximum levels.//
ReplyDelete