Structural and Narrative Reconstruction of Representations of “Environment,” “Nature,” and “Ecotourism”

This study aims at the structural and narrative reconstruction of representations of “environment,” “nature,” and “ecotourism” held by growth coalition members involved in ecotourism management and visitors to the Dadia Forest Reserve. We employed a word association task method and used a classification system to content analyze associations. The structural reconstruction revealed that the degree of homogeneity of association category profiles between respondent groups proved to be quite high for each stimulus term. Sample demographics did not influence associations elicited significantly. The loose interrelation of the tourism image of “ecotourism” with the environmentalist one, shown by the narrative reconstruction, should be attributed to the incompatibility between biophobic depictions of the term “environment” and biophilic depictions of the term “nature.” To face this dualism, it is suggested that ecotourism managers focus environmental messages promoted through ecotourism on the interplay between society and nature.