CATS will hold the Tourism Online Forum Series (TOFS) vol.52 on Thursday, July 3. Anyone is welcome to attend. We look forward to your participation.

Nature Always Recovers! Participants’ Perceptions of the Physical Impacts on Nature from Nature-Based Events

Abstract:
Tourism has difficulty limiting its contribution to impacting our planet. To understand this challenge, the analysis considers the scale of physical impacts on nature from event sport participants. This presentation provides findings through a cultural degrowth perspective to advocate for the need to practise self-limitation and reduce environmental waste from economic activities. The case comes from two types of nature-based events in Jämtland, Sweden, based on 50 semi-structured interviews, observations and photo-elicitation. Observations of event participants reveal how they perceive physical impacts on nature. The findings reveal the difficulties of adhering to limitations. Initially, the event participants considered only trash or greenhouse gas emissions as impacts but were stunned to see photos of how impacts such as trail and soil erosion had gone beyond what they imagined. However, responsibility for limiting the effects tended to shift to others, particularly the event organisers. This presentation highlights a paradox in event tourism: tourism is a convivial idea of visiting nature together with others, which collides with resource utilisation that heavily impacts the environment.

Keywords: Degrowth, Limits, Nature-based events, Environmental impacts, Event tourism

Hosted by: Hokkaido University, Center for Advanced Tourism Studies (CATS)

Date/Time: Thursday 3 July 2025  |  18:30-20:00 (JST)

Venue: Online (Zoom Webinar)

Language: English

Capacity: 50 persons

Participation fee: Free to join (pre-registration system)

Speaker: Dr. Axel Eriksson
Bio:
Axel Eriksson holds a PhD in Tourism from Mid Sweden University. His dissertation took a qualitative approach to map four actors and understand how they accepted the physical impacts on nature, such as trail erosion, from nature-based events. He is currently a JSPS fellow at Hokkaido University, focusing on digital nomads in Japan.

Moderator: Dr. Meng Qu

Registration:
Please register at the URL below.
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5WhpkH8wRtSPAFZrTNKB_Q

Contact:
Hokkaido University, Center for Advanced Tourism Studies (CATS)
online-forum(at)cats.hokudai.ac.jp
*Please replace the (at) part with @.