Is agritourism a more eco-friendly & gender-equitable form of tourism?

Would you pay more for cher­ries you picked your­self? Respond­ents in an agri­t­our­ism study by Erdogan Koc said they would. In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, his second, Prof Koc sum­mar­ises the case for agri­t­our­ism and its poten­tial bene­fits for the envir­on­ment and women … and cherry growers.

In par­al­lel with its fast growth over the past two dec­ades, tour­ism has begun to present major envir­on­ment­al and sus­tain­ab­il­ity prob­lems.^{1, 2} Indeed it is one of the major causes of pol­lu­tion in China.³

Many research­ers have sug­ges­ted that mass tour­ism has sev­er­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity prob­lems and risks relat­ing to both the phys­ic­al and social envir­on­ments.^{4, 5, 6} Mean­while, oth­er research­ers show that tour­ists, includ­ing pack­age tour­ists,¹¹ are increas­ingly becom­ing inter­ested in sus­tain­ab­il­ity.^{7, 8, 9, 10}

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity issues relat­ing to tour­ism are not lim­ited to the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment alone. Research shows that female employ­ment in tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity is both ver­tic­ally and hori­zont­ally segreg­ated.¹² In tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity, women often tend to find employ­ment in sub­or­din­ate posts with low incomes and lim­ited oppor­tun­it­ies for upward mobil­ity.^{13, 14, 15} Women often work as recep­tion­ists, wait­resses, room attend­ants, clean­ers, travel agents, while men at sim­il­ar levels of employ­ment are usu­ally employed as bar­men, port­ers, garden­ers, main­ten­ance staff, etc.¹²

Also see Hart­man, Nguyễn, and Võ’s “GT” Insight
“How can voca­tion­al edu­ca­tion con­trib­ute to women’s empowerment?”

All of the above sug­gests that there is a need for more sus­tain­able and equit­able tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity products.¹⁶

Sev­er­al stud­ies show that agri­t­our­ism is a more envir­on­ment­ally-friendly form of tour­ism.^{17, 18, 19, 20} Also, research sug­gests that oppor­tun­it­ies provided in agri­t­our­ism may help reduce gender dis­crim­in­a­tion in the sec­tor as a whole.^{9, 20, 21, 22}

As agri­t­our­ism allows tour­ists to engage in out­door activ­it­ies, spend qual­ity time with fam­ily, and pur­chase and con­sume fresh­er foods,^{23, 24} it may be increas­ingly pre­ferred as a tour­ism activ­ity.¹² Like­wise, as agri­t­our­ism activ­it­ies com­prise a range of explor­at­ory day trip exper­i­ences, tour­ists may tend to vis­it farms more often than they engage in tra­di­tion­al forms of tour­ism activ­ity.²⁵ This means that agri­t­our­ism has a rel­at­ively high­er growth poten­tial com­pared with mass tourism.

Also see Peter Semone’s “GT” Insight
“Rur­al tour­ism: Delight­ing tour­ists, devel­op­ing communities”

A study by my col­leagues and I earli­er this year showed that cus­tom­er par­ti­cip­a­tion in agri­t­our­ism with a choice of activ­it­ies increased cus­tom­er sat­is­fac­tion and loy­alty.²⁰ More import­antly, the choice cre­ated an illu­sion of decision­al con­trol and res­ul­ted in the fur­ther pos­it­ive eval­u­ation of their over­all experiences. 

Tour­ists in the study eval­u­ated the cher­ries they picked at a cherry farm more pos­it­ively than the cher­ries picked by staff at the very same farm. They were pre­pared to pay 72% more for the cher­ries they them­selves picked.

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Pick­ing cher­ries. By Free-Pho­tos (CC0) via Pixabay.

Click here for the full list of references

About the author

Erdogan Koc is a pro­fess­or of ser­vices mar­ket­ing and man­age­ment in the Fac­ulty of Eco­nom­ics, Admin­is­trat­ive and Social Sci­ences, Depart­ment of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion at Bah­cese­hir Uni­ver­sity, Istan­bul, Turkey. 

A spe­cial­ist in the mar­ket­ing and man­age­ment of tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity ser­vices, Prof Koc has writ­ten sev­er­al books. His most recent is Cross-Cul­tur­al Aspects of Tour­ism and Hos­pit­al­ity: A Ser­vices Mar­ket­ing and Man­age­ment Per­spect­ive.

Prof Koc’s schol­arly papers have been pub­lished in lead­ing journ­als includ­ing Tour­ism Man­age­ment, Journ­al of Travel and Tour­ism Mar­ket­ing, Journ­al of Hos­pit­al­ity Mar­ket­ing and Man­age­ment, Annals of Tour­ism Research, Inter­na­tion­al Journ­al of Inter­cul­tur­al Rela­tions, Total Qual­ity Man­age­ment and Busi­ness Excel­lence, Inter­na­tion­al Journ­al of Human Resource Man­age­ment, and Journ­al of Gast­ro­nomy and Tour­ism.

He serves on the edit­or­i­al boards of sev­er­al journ­als includ­ing Journ­al of Hos­pit­al­ity Mar­ket­ing and Man­age­ment, Inter­na­tion­al Journ­al of Inter­cul­tur­al Rela­tions, Inter­na­tion­al Journ­al of Hos­pit­al­ity and Tour­ism Admin­is­tra­tion, Journ­al of Pro­mo­tion Man­age­ment, Young Con­sumers, Journ­al of Hos­pit­al­ity and Tour­ism Insights, Journ­al of Hos­pit­al­ity, and Journ­al of Tour­ism Quarterly.

References

1. Bress­an, A., & Pedrini, M. (2020). “Explor­ing sus­tain­able-ori­ented innov­a­tion with­in micro and small tour­ism firms”, Tour­ism Plan­ning & Devel­op­ment, 17(5), 497 – 514.
2. Sun, Q., & Liu, Z. (2020). “Impact of tour­ism activ­it­ies on water pol­lu­tion in the West Lake Basin (Hang­zhou, China)”, Open Geosciences, 12(1), 1302 – 1308.
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3. Qiu, X.; Fang, Y.; Yang, X.; Zhu, F. (2017). “Tour­ism eco-effi­ciency meas­ure­ment, char­ac­ter­ist­ics, and its influ­ence factors in China”, Sus­tain­ab­il­ity 9, 1634.
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4. Hig­gins-Des­bio­lles, F., Car­ni­celli, S., Krolikowski, C., Wijes­inghe, G., & Boluk, K. (2019). “Degrow­ing tour­ism: Rethink­ing tour­ism”, Journ­al of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism, 27(12), 1926 – 1944.
5. Lu, J., & Nepal, S. K. (2009). “Sus­tain­able tour­ism research: An ana­lys­is of papers pub­lished in the Journ­al of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism”, Journ­al of sus­tain­able Tour­ism, 17(1), 5 – 16. 
6. Mitrică, B., Şerb­an, P. R., Mocanu, I., Dami­an, N., Grigor­es­cu, I., Dumitraşcu, M., & Dumitrică, C. (2021). “Devel­op­ing an Indic­at­or-Based Frame­work to Meas­ure Sus­tain­able Tour­ism in Romania. A Ter­rit­ori­al Approach”, Sus­tain­ab­il­ity, 13(5), 2649.
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7. Buffa, F. (2015). “Young tour­ists and sus­tain­ab­il­ity. Pro­files, atti­tudes, and implic­a­tions for des­tin­a­tion strategies”, Sus­tain­ab­il­ity 7, no. 10: 14042 – 14062.
8. Kasten­holz, E., Euse­bio, C., & Carneiro, M. J. (2018). “Seg­ment­ing the rur­al tour­ist mar­ket by sus­tain­able travel beha­viour: Insights from vil­lage vis­it­ors in Por­tugal”, Journ­al of Des­tin­a­tion Mar­ket­ing & Man­age­ment, 10, 132 – 142.
9. Koc, E. (2020a). Cross-cul­tur­al Aspects of Tour­ism and Hos­pit­al­ity: A Ser­vices Mar­ket­ing and Man­age­ment Per­spect­ive. Rout­ledge.
10. Jiménez-Gar­cía, M., Ruiz-Chico, J., Peña-Sánchez, A. R., & López-Sánchez, J. A. (2020). “A bib­li­o­met­ric ana­lys­is of sports tour­ism and sus­tain­ab­il­ity (2002 – 2019)”, Sus­tain­ab­il­ity, 12(7), 2840.
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11. Gof­fi, G., Cladera, M., & Pen­carelli, T. (2019). “Does sus­tain­ab­il­ity mat­ter to pack­age tour­ists? The case of large-scale coastal tour­ism”, Inter­na­tion­al Journ­al of Tour­ism Research, 21(4), 544 – 559.
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12. Koc, E. (2020b). “Do women make bet­ter in tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity? A con­cep­tu­al review from a cus­tom­er sat­is­fac­tion and ser­vice qual­ity per­spect­ive”, Journ­al of Qual­ity Assur­ance in Hos­pit­al­ity & Tour­ism, 21(4), 402 – 429.
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13. Kogov­sek, M., & Kogov­sek, M. (2015). “Hos­pit­al­ity and tour­ism gender issues remain unsolved: A call for research”, Quaes­tus, (6), 194.
14. Carvalho, I., Costa, C., Lykke, N., Torres, A., & Wahl, A. (2018). “Women at the top of tour­ism organ­iz­a­tions: Views from the glass roof”, Journ­al of Human Resources in Hos­pit­al­ity & Tour­ism, 1 – 26.
15. Rem­ing­ton, J., & Kit­ter­lin-Lynch, M. (2018). “Still pound­ing on the glass ceil­ing: A study of female lead­ers in hos­pit­al­ity, travel, and tour­ism man­age­ment”, Journ­al of Human Resources in Hos­pit­al­ity & Tour­ism, 17(1), 22 – 37.
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16. Paun­ović, I., Dressler, M., Mam­ula Nikolić, T., & Pop­ović Pantić, S. (2020). “Devel­op­ing a com­pet­it­ive and sus­tain­able des­tin­a­tion of the future: Clusters and pre­dict­ors of suc­cess­ful nation­al-level des­tin­a­tion gov­ernance across des­tin­a­tion life-cycle”, Sus­tain­ab­il­ity, 12(10), 4066.
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17. Mas­tronardi, L., Giac­cio, V., Gian­nel­li, A., & Scardera, A. (2015). “Is agri­t­our­ism eco-friendly? A com­par­is­on between agri­t­our­ism and oth­er farms in Italy using farm account­ancy data net­work data­set”, Spring­er­Plus, 4(1), 1 – 12.
18. Shen, Ching-Cheng, Yen-Rung Chang, and Der-Jen Liu. “Rur­al Tour­ism and Envir­on­ment­al Sus­tain­ab­il­ity — A Study on a Mod­el for Assess­ing the Devel­op­ment­al Poten­tial of Organ­ic Agri­t­our­ism”, Sus­tain­ab­il­ity 12, no. 22 (2020): 9642.
19. Tseng, M. L., Chang, C. H., Wu, K. J., Lin, C. W. R., Kal­na­ovkul, B., & Tan, R. R. (2019). “Sus­tain­able agri­t­our­ism in Thai­l­and: Mod­el­ing busi­ness per­form­ance and envir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity under uncer­tainty”, Sus­tain­ab­il­ity, 11(15), 4087.
20. Koc, E., Boz, H. and Boz, B. (2021). “Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Implic­a­tions of Agro­tour­ism”, Unpub­lished Work­ing Paper. Bah­cese­hir Uni­ver­sity, Istan­bul, Tur­key.
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21. Boley, B. B., Ayscue, E., Maruyama, N., & Woosnam, K. M. (2017). “Gender and empower­ment: Assess­ing dis­crep­an­cies using the res­id­ent empower­ment through tour­ism scale”, Journ­al of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism, 25(1), 113 – 129.
22. Sav­age, A. E., Bar­bieri, C., & Jakes, S. (2020). “Cul­tiv­at­ing suc­cess: per­son­al, fam­ily and soci­et­al attrib­utes affect­ing women in agri­t­our­ism”, Journ­al of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism, 1 – 21.
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23. Lusk, Jayson L. “Extern­al valid­ity of the food val­ues scale”, Food Qual­ity and Pref­er­ence 22, no. 5 (2011): 452 – 462.
24. Lusk, Jayson L. “Income and (Ir) ration­al food choice”, Journ­al of Eco­nom­ic Beha­vi­or & Organ­iz­a­tion 166 (2019): 630 – 645.
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25. Chikuta, O., & Makacha, C. (2016). “Agri­t­our­ism: A pos­sible altern­at­ive to Zim­b­ab­we’s tour­ism product”, Journ­al of Tour­ism and Hos­pit­al­ity Man­age­ment, 4(3), 103 – 113.
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