Does Ecotourism Influence Environmental Awareness? A Methodological Approach Based on Virtual Reality and Physiological Responses

More than 16,000 Scholars assert that engagement in nature-based activities is a critical approach to help modern society transform its contemporary culture into a sustainable one. This connection, however, has not been scientifically proven, because so far the methods applied relied on questioning and observing tourists involved in ecotourism activities, hence research samples were small and biased. This work presents an alternative methodological approach for exploring this influence with larger and less biased samples, while understanding how and why memorable experiences are evaluated and appreciated. It uses immersive virtual reality, mobile electroencephalograph, electro-dermal activity sensors, mobile eye tracker devices, a camera / software of facial expressions recognition, questionnaires and Bayesian Belief Networks. This methodological approach was built based on a multidisciplinary approach. It learnt from the tourism literature that the level of influence of nature-based activities on the way tourists relate with nature depends: on the experience (stimuli) and on tourists’ profile (gender, age and socio-cultural background), previous level of environmental awareness, previously lived similar experiences (level of novelty) and motivations to enrol on the experience. Based on these learnings, this study proposes a methodology that uses non-voluntary reactions to assess the level of influence of nature-based activities on the way tourists relate with nature. To do so, this method compares tourists’ non-voluntary reactions (brain waves, skin conductance, facial expressions and focus) to different simulated tourism experiences and how these affect the recall of the experiences.

Keywords: ecotourism; neuroscience; methodology.