Trends in the concept of ecotourism

The trend is the predominance of the socio-environmental aspect, based on several representations such as the following. In each semantic nucleus, other concepts converge:

In summary, the peripheral reiterative terms are environmental management, environment, environmental protection, rural tourism, sustainable development, conservation, and protected areas (figure 1).

Figure 1  Terms more related to ecotourism 2015-2020  

According to figure 1, ecotourism is directly related to a form of tourism that has been approached in terms of environmental management from the ecological perspective and tourism development for conservation and sustainability. That is, as mentioned above, the predominant aspect in its conceptualization is the socio-environmental one, from different perspectives, such as:

Sustainable development. One of the main purposes is local development (Carrillo et al., ²⁰¹⁷; García et al., ²⁰¹⁷; García et al., ; González & Neger, ²⁰²⁰; Moretti et al., ²⁰¹⁶; Orgaz & Cañero, ²⁰¹⁶) because it generates socioeconomic benefits, dynamic development of local capacities and, mainly, of the territory that becomes the tourism product. In addition, it has sociocultural effects due to the possibility of change in symbolic and social structures and in the political, the economic, and the institutional. In this sense, new institutional frameworks are required for new economic activities through cooperation networks for self-sufficiency and sustainability. Basically, development is understood in the socioeconomic and sociopolitical aspect (Camacho et al., ²⁰¹⁶), hence the requirement about the reflection on the development model (Sánchez, ²⁰¹⁹). In this sense, the socio-environmental aspect is closely linked to the sociocultural one.

Conservation. This perspective emerges in connection with sustainable or sustainable development (Obombo et al., ²⁰¹⁷; Palacio & Mantilla, ²⁰¹⁸; Peralta et al., ²⁰¹⁸). Actually, this should be the central object of ecotourism activity. However, given the prevailing neoliberal model, economic development is the central object. From this perspective, nature is understood as a natural resource, which can be used without destroying it to conserve it over time for the benefit of future generations. However, it is important to understand that the attribute of ecotourism is to consider nature as an essential part of the human being, hence the importance of ethical values and social responsibility in the relationships established with it. It would imply assuming sustainability as the substantive, based on reflection through the critical spirit to promote, according to J. Moreno (²⁰¹⁷), new types of life and modes of social organization with effective commitments to live in harmony, with an alternative proposal such as ethno-development, and with contributions from traditional knowledge. This last vision does not yet permeate the concept of ecotourism because it emerges without forcefulness.

Nature tourism. This is considered as one of its modalities, (Díaz et al., ²⁰¹⁷; González & Neger, ²⁰²⁰; Moretti et al., ²⁰¹⁶) because its fundamental objective is the trip to share with nature, to enjoy it, to appreciate it, and to value it, generally, in protected areas.

Also, the concept of ecotourism has correlations with other concepts that, although studied to a lesser extent, carry a high meaning and symbolism, such as: community, environment, and cultural services. From the sustainable vision, the concept of ecotourism is highly interrelated with the cultural and social welfare (González & Neger, ²⁰²⁰; Moretti et al., ²⁰¹⁶; Pérez et al., ²⁰¹⁸). Nature is conceived as a protected heritage through ethical values and social responsibility cemented through environmental education. That is, the sociocultural emerges in the studies but not in a significant way.

Trends in socio-environmental and sociocultural aspects of ecotourism problems

The socio-environmental is also the axis of the problem that most arouses interest. It is related to the concern for the development and conservation of protected areas in each geographical region. Figure 2 shows the categories of analysis involved in the research problems.

After the bibliographic review and categorization of the dimensions of the theoretical foundations used in the research documents, it is identified that the studies of the last five years have focused on addressing sustainability alternatives, the international market, agency, community participation, and research. These, with the passing of time and the socioeconomic and ecological reality that each period brings, have shifted from theoretical rhetoric to the perspective of scientific co-construction of ecotourism.

Ecotourism approached from the sustainable dimension had its greatest role in the years 2015, 2016, and 2019 from the qualitative approach; and in 2018 from the mixed approach. The term development is understood and represented with others as growth and change in favor of environmental conservation; especially, of protected areas such as nature reserves and parks. In the 57 papers studied, in 66.4% of them the main problem addressed has to do with development in connection with: environmental conservation (12.28%), weak sustainability (7.0%) strong sustainability (8.7%), and peace and conflict (10.5%). In other words, it is seen as a process through which benefits are obtained for the territory. However, interest in biodiversity and ecosystem protection in general is not a wide-ranging concern. It is also important to emphasize the role given to the communities in obtaining this development, which gives rise to new problems related to education when considering development through the web, social learning, and the study of attitudes for the promotion of tourism.

Figure 2 Categories ofanalysis of research problems 2015-2020 

It is noteworthy that the representation of its analysis is made from the communities. However, development is assumed from the economists and the utilitarian perspective in the sense of better management of natural resources. The fundamental concern is the incidence of ecotourism on local economic development (Carrillo et al., ²⁰¹⁷; Obombo & Velarde, ²⁰¹⁹; Villanueva, ²⁰¹⁹) and of ecotourism and conservation therein (Jacob & Echeverry, ²⁰¹⁹; Peralta et al., ²⁰¹⁸; Rosas, ²⁰¹⁶). Most research does not address the problems in a complex way to consider the analysis of the social, the biodiversity of ecosystems, and the relationships with the government or power entities. In this regard, the relationship between development and poverty in ecotourism areas is little studied (Díaz et al., ²⁰¹⁷).

On the other hand, the dimension of the agency was deepened from the qualitative approach in 2016 and 2019 from the mixed approach, coinciding in some way with the dimension of the international market that was addressed in 2016 from the mixed approach. Regarding the dimension of community participation and governance, the scientific production was mostly from the qualitative approach in the years 2017 and 2018. Finally, the dimension of research and education in ecotourism was prioritized from the quantitative and mixed approach for the years 2015, 2018, and 2019.

Although the sociocultural aspect is not the most studied in the problems, the following are considered as novelties in the research: the sociopolitical effects of ecotourism (Montenegro, ²⁰¹⁷; J. Moreno, ²⁰¹⁷), specifically in relation to the consolidation of peace processes (Cairo et al., ; Henao et al., ²⁰¹⁸); and the analys is of the socioecological transformations of ecotourism. In them, the study of the problematic of the relationships between ecotourism, community, valuation of cultural traditions, and environmental education is considered (Cujía et al., ²⁰¹⁷; Luna et al., ²⁰²⁰). Another change is the study of life experiences in ecotourism based on social representations (Sandoval et al., ²⁰¹⁹).

Trends in the characteristics of ecotourism research methodology

Figure 3 shows the data related to the type of research and years of greatest production in this field of knowledge:

Years of production. In general, it is evident that the years with the highest production related to ecotourism were 2019 (27%), 2016 (25%), 2018 (20%), and 2017 (18%). Likewise, it is possible to identify that the trends of the research approach were transcending towards the relationship and complementation between qualitative and quantitative approaches. There was also an increase in production, except for the year 2020, possibly caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Figure 3  Scientific production and research approaches 2015-2020  

In 2015 and 2016 the scientific papers focused on the qualitative approach. In 2017 the works were developed in a shared way between qualitative and quantitative approaches. In 2018 the scientific production from the mixed approach increased exponentially. Likewise, in 2019 the production from the mixed approach was maintained and the production from the qualitative perspective increased. Finally, in 2020 the scientific production facing ecotourism decreased and returned to focus on research of qualitative and quantitative types.

Places of production. The countries with the highest research production in recent years on ecotourism are Mexico (35%), Colombia (24.5%), Brazil (15.7%), Ecuador (10.5%), Peru (5.2%), Dominican Republic (3.5%), and Argentina and Cuba (1.7% each). Due to its economic, environmental, and social importance, ecotourism plays a significant role in Latin America. Their main interest is the conservation of natural reserves and parks from a sustainable perspective. In addition, it is important to highlight the social perspective in the following thematic approaches:

In Colombia, the particular interest in the impact of ecotourism as an alternative for the consolidation of peace processes in territories where political violence has been experienced is an emerging and specific issue in the country. The relationship of ecotourism with politics and regulations is distinctive; this is taken as the object of study. Similarly, two pertinent and novel topics are addressed, such as the question about the perceptions of young people with respect to ecotourism, since they are the ones who will be able to strengthen these processes, and the reflection on the connection between education, technology, and ecotourism.

Characteristics of the research methodology. Regarding the question "How is research conducted?", it was found that, in the Latin American region, Mexico in 2015 concentrated 66.67% of the scientific production from a qualitative approach; while Brazil, 33.33%. On the other hand, 100% of the scientific production carried out from the quantitative approach in 2015 was generated in Brazil, which evidenced that for the period in question the region did not produce scientific documents from a mixed approach. The types of data analyzed are (47.3%), quantitative (26.3%), and mixed (26.3%) natures. In the quantitative type research, work is done on the correlation of two variables (Domínguez et al., ²⁰¹⁹; Silva et al., ). It is evident in all of them the concern for the validity of the data. However, in the deepening of the analyses, the triangulation of the data is not used (Correa et al., ²⁰¹⁷; Obombo & Velarde, ²⁰¹⁹) for the understanding and explanation of the realities that become evident.

Figure 4 shows the types of research on ecotourism conducted in Latin America. As for 2016, scientific production on ecotourism diversified research approaches and new countries are participating. Mexico was characterized by having 50% of the production carried out in the region from the qualitative approach; 100% from the quantitative approach and 33.3% from the mixed approach. At the same time, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Argentina explored scientific production from the qualitative approach with 10% respectively. In addition to Mexico, Brazil and the Dominican Republic published 66.6% of the scientific production created from the mixed approach.

Figure 4  Types of ecotourism research in Latin America  

For 2017, the research approaches of Latin American scientific production related to ecotourism is pluralized but concentrated in some countries. Colombia with 60% displaced Mexico in terms of production made from the qualitative approach and is equal with 33% regarding products made from the quantitative approach. Similarly, Cuba was visible with 20% of the products approached from the qualitative approach, and Ecuador with 33.3% of the production developed from the quantitative approach. Finally, there was an increase in the production of ecotourism products from the mixed approach, monopolized by Mexico.

Fundamentally, the following year stood out as the year of the revolution of the mixed research approach. Despite continuing with a concentration of scientific production in Latin America, new protagonists were observed in comparison to previous years. Colombia led with 60% of the research carried out from the mixed approach, with 100% of those developed from the quantitative perspective, and shared second place with Mexico with 25% of the studies carried out from the qualitative approach, an approach led by Ecuador with 50% of the scientific production.

It can be sustained that Colombia has a very important role in the region in scientific production from the mixed approach on ecotourism. In 2019 it generated 60% of the research, followed by Ecuador and Mexico with 20% respectively. On the other hand, productions with a qualitative approach were led by Brazil with 50%. Those with a quantitative approach were shared equally between Ecuador and Mexico. Likewise, a negative impact is observed in the scientific production of ecotourism in the region for 2020, possibly caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. This is the year in which the production of the mixed approach slowed down, and Mexico once again was the leader in scientific production from the quantitative approach, sharing the production of qualitative approach with Colombia, both with 50%.

Moreover, the character of the studies is: exploratory (Gonzáles & Neri, ²⁰¹⁵; Obombo & Velarde, ²⁰¹⁹) and exploratory-descriptive (Cardoso et al., ²⁰¹⁵; Maranhão & Azevedo, ²⁰¹⁹). The most explicit methods are those of qualitative type research. Table 1 shows the most applied research methods:

Table 1  Methods applied in research 2015-2020  

The predominance of documentary review research is evident. Although it is very important, there is still a need to broaden the scope of research in which not only diagnoses are made but also solution alternatives are proposed with their respective evaluations to enrich this field of ecotourism with their generalizations. Despite the perspective of community participation through research has been emerging, it is not significant. For example, the application of the action research participation method has only one research.

The qualitative techniques most commonly used in the research are:

For data analysis one research used Atlas Ti software (Obombo et al., ²⁰¹⁷), and another used the freely distributed qualitative analysis software Weft QDA (Díaz & Vega, ²⁰¹⁵).

The techniques for the quantitative analysis were survey, factor analysis and non-hierarchical segmentation (Carvache, ²⁰¹⁹). The programs used for the systematization and analysis of the data were: the SPSS statistician (Obombo & Velarde, ²⁰¹⁹; Obombo et al., ; Orgaz & Cañero, ²⁰¹⁶), the ANOVA F (Díaz et al.,²⁰¹⁷), and Microsoft Office Excel and Statistic Program for Social Sciences version 20.0 (Correa et al., ²⁰¹⁷). However, for mixed type research, only few expressed having used the triangulation technique for the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, which contributes to the validity control (Jacob & Echeverry, ²⁰¹⁹; Obombo et al., ).

Discussion

Research on ecotourism, despite employing a diversity of techniques and strategies to approach the study of reality with multiple perspectives and the analysis of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed data, has not yet adopted a strongly reflexive approach. It is more concerned with the validity of the data as in the case of quantitative and mixed research than with the generation and deepening of theories to consolidate consistent theoretical explanations that lead to the understanding and possible transformation of the analyzed reality. In this case, the theories mentioned are:

This indicates that even the postulates of the positivist approach are very strong given its concern with the criteria of validity of actions and not acts, interpretations of human and social actions. In this dynamic, although there is an advance in qualitative and mixed research because the qualitative proposal is to do science to understand the particularities and specificities of the multiple and diverse social phenomena, in reality, the methods used in this framework are few: ethnographic and participatory action research. The latter is striking because the community is identified as a concept inherent to ecotourism; however, in research practices, it is still absent and only plays the role of information units. There is a concern for description, correlation, analysis, and not for understanding.

In coherence with the results obtained in this work, ecotourism as a field of research in Latin America has progressively gained interest from researchers. The nuclear themes are ecotourism and environmental conservation in very localized sites, especially, in reserve areas and natural parks. These themes relate to the concept of development, mainly from the economic management, with the novelty of the contributions about solidarity economy (Rosas, ²⁰¹⁶). In the social, in addition to the economic, other relationships also emerge but not in an integrated and forceful way. In this perspective, there are few investigations that address the sociocultural (J. Moreno, ²⁰¹⁷; Martí et al., ²⁰¹⁶; Olmos, ²⁰¹⁶), the socio-educational (Quezada & Mengual, ²⁰¹⁹; Sánchez, ²⁰¹⁹; Vila-Freyer, ²⁰¹⁶) and the community participation (Cairo et al., ; Gonzáles, ²⁰¹⁸; Márquez et al., ²⁰¹⁶). That is, it is a field in constitution. According to the research, these trends resulting from research practices on ecotourism obey a historical and social context, which is embodied in the emphases of the problems and methodologies addressed in the research practices (figure 5).

Figure 5 Emphasis on the results of ecotourism research practices 

Regarding the categorization for the identification of the dimensions resulting from the scientific production of ecotourism in Latin America, it is determined that in 2015 the results addressed from the qualitative and quantitative approach were directed to define ecotourism as a sustainable economic activity, and from the qualitative approach as an activity that requires government policies for its promotion. In 2016, the results tended to mention ecotourism as a sustainable economic activity and a biocentric perspective of the activity. Likewise, in 2017 ecotourism from the three research approaches is defined as a sustainable economic activity. On the other hand, for the years 2018 and 2019, the results coincide with those obtained in 2016. In 2020, despite the low scientific production related to ecotourism, the results tend to revolve around the dimension of environmental conservation, government policies and other aspects such as technology. In these, sustainable economic activities and the biocentric are mostly related. These can be integrated into two dimensions: (a) sustainability: socio-environmental and socioeconomic; and (b) environmental culture: sociopolitical, socio-educational, and scientific-technological, shown in figure 6:

Figure 6 Dimensions of ecotourism according to research tendenies 

Two dimensions are integrated in this proposal:

Regarding the way research is produced, it is noted that research teams have been formed between three or more researchers (45%), two researchers (26.3%) and with only one researcher (28%). This may show an advance in collaborative work. However, it is not evident the formation of interdisciplinary groups to deal with a complex topic such as ecotourism, neither the existence of a research program that is promoted in an institutional or interinstitutional way that leads to overcome the insularity of researchers through the association of these.

On the other hand, with respect to other research practices, the following are discussed: (a) socialization and dissemination of knowledge, (b) relevance of the research, and (c) usefulness and applicability. Regarding socialization and dissemination, the researchers do not point out this process in the methodological phases of the research. They do not point out how the knowledge obtained with the communities returns to them to enrich their own ecotourism processes. In this aspect, it is important to keep in mind that knowledge is more scientific the higher the levels of socialization, systematization, and theoretical foundation, hence the recommendation to place this aspect as one of the phases to be developed in the execution of the projects.

With reference to relevance, work was done to solve knowledge questions related to problems of local contexts. That is, the research has a high social relevance. The research problem arises from the needs of the environment. It is addressed to provide guidelines, strategies, and recommendations to improve the quality of life of communities promoting ecotourism, hence the predominance of the case study method (García et al., ²⁰¹⁸; Gonzáles, ²⁰¹⁸; Moreno, ²⁰¹⁹; Tavares & Albuquerque, ²⁰¹⁶).

Similarly, the above has to do with what is useful and, therefore, we speak of applied research. In the findings of the corpus reviewed, application is presented in the following aspects:

The most recommended practice is to hold workshops for the provision of integrated and contextualized environmental education, in accordance with the diverse real training needs of ecotourism stakeholders, in favor of the sustainability of the territories and the valuation of their cultures. It is recommended that scientific and technical education be promoted, in the first place, by universities and local communities; secondly, by the institutions of the State or institutions such as NGOs interested in promoting it.

From this point of view, it is very important to consider the contributions of the research carried out on the problem because in this way it can be guaranteed that the scientific knowledge is disseminated to the appropriate and final users such as the members of the communities executing ecotourism projects. With the participation of the communities in the planning, design, execution, and evaluation of the environmental education processes, innovation and creativity can be generated so that these, in an autonomous and creative way, can give their particular and distinctive seal to the training to contribute to the realization of ecotourism projects with identity, novelty, and context.

In summary, research practices are based on sustainable development, environmental protection, and economic sustainability. From this perspective, the positivist vision of science predominates, interested more in tangible, useful, and pragmatic results than in enriching the epistemological and methodological aspects of research work, hence the need to carry out pertinent, practical, and useful research practices with an integrating vision that contribute to the enrichment of the study of the complexity of the problems to be addressed from the perspective of interdisciplinarity.