The importance of message framing in rule compliance by visitors during wildlife tourism

Abstract

Abstract A conundrum of wildlife tourism is balancing wildlife conservation and tourist satisfaction. Mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei) are a flagship species for biodiversity and there is worldwide interest in gorilla trekking safaris. This tourism provides substantial revenue to the government and local communities for gorilla protection, but puts them in danger of zoonotic diseases. To minimize disease transmission, health guidelines are in place for visitors whereby they are asked to remain 7 m from the endangered apes and stay in a cohesive group. Unfortunately, tourists often do not follow these rules and consequently their behavior puts gorillas at risk. The pre‐trekking messages presented to tourists in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda were changed to determine if the way messages are stated affects visitor adherence to rules. Tourists (n = 389) either received strategic messages that were positively or negatively framed in relation to expectations to follow specific rules to adhere to health guidelines, and tourist behavior was measured, such as the nearest distance they were to gorillas, and their cohesiveness. Using generalized linear mixed models, it was found that framing messages affected tourist behavior. Tourists who received a negatively framed message had a higher adherence to rules than those who received a positive or control message. They were 75% further from the gorillas (7.26 vs. 4.52 m), more cohesive (0.40 vs. 0.81 m to each other), and approached the gorillas less (0.34 vs. 1.32 times) than the control message. These findings demonstrate that communicating in different ways promotes changes in behavior by tourists, which reduces the chances of epizootic respiratory infections being passed to vulnerable animals. Strategic message framing should be widely considered as a cost‐effective mechanism to promote behavior change during ecotourism.

Keywords

• communication
• conservation psychology
• ecotourism
• framing effect
• messaging
• mountain gorillas