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Article Dans Une Revue Journal of Sustainable Tourism Année : 2022

Visitors’ motivations to engage in glacier tourism in the European Alps: comparison of six sites in France, Switzerland, and Austria

Résumé

Glacier tourism is an important form of travel in the Alps that is currently threatened by climate change. Previous studies have shown that glaciers are retreating worldwide, and media coverage has led to the development of last-chance tourism. However, few studies have focused on the European Alps, and glacier site visitors have not been segmented based on their motivations yet, hindering the understanding of different profiles. Therefore, using a latent class analysis, this study reveals that the 1330 survey respondents from six glacier tourism sites (Montenvers, Nid d’Aigle, Glacier Blanc, Rhône Glacier, Aletsch Glacier, and Franz–Josefs–Höhe/Pasterze) in three alpine countries (France, Switzerland, and Austria) can be segmented into four classes based on their motivations and other factors. Among them, the “last chance” and “climate visitor” classes were identified, representing between 50% and 57% of the respondents from the investigated sites. The results also indicate that visitors’ motivations are stable across sites and that glaciers are the object of last-chance tourism. This research contributes to the fields of glacier tourism and last-chance tourism by proposing a segmentation of visitors and allowing the generalisation of the presence of last-chance tourism for glacier tourism sites in the Alps.

Domaines

Géographie
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Dates et versions

hal-03602585 , version 1 (09-03-2022)

Identifiants

Citer

Emmanuel Salim, Marius Mayer, Philipp Sacher, Ludovic Ravanel. Visitors’ motivations to engage in glacier tourism in the European Alps: comparison of six sites in France, Switzerland, and Austria. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2022, pp.1-21. ⟨10.1080/09669582.2022.2044833⟩. ⟨hal-03602585⟩
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