Green Nature or Green Fantasies: Representations of Ecotourism in Vietnam

Thi Kim Phung Dang ()
Additional contact information
Thi Kim Phung Dang: Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City 72900, Vietnam

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-17

Abstract: Although ecotourism is believed to help reduce the negative effects of vacationing inflicted on the natural world, it is still an ambiguous concept. The contentious interpretations of the term thus affect not only ecotourism in practice but also ecotourism policy development. This research article provides a qualitative analysis of how ecotourism is framed in Vietnamese online advertisements and news media coverage. The article’s theoretical underpinnings were gleaned via a review of the relevant literature. This was followed by a thematic analysis of online advertisements for thirty national parks and seventeen ecotourism sites/resorts in Vietnam. The article also features a thorough analysis of -related content from the country’s five most popular online newspapers. The research findings uncovered three major patterns of ecotourism representation in Vietnam: purely ecological tourism in national parks, nature-based tourism that is combined with anthropogenic landscapes as a form of pseudo-ecotourism in tourism resorts, and emerging checking-in hotspots at spontaneous sites. These patterns differ not only in the extent to which they correspond to the core elements of ecotourism but also in their perspectives of nature and the human–nature relationship. The implications of the three patterns for future ecotourism development in Vietnam, particularly concerns regarding policymaking and mismanagement, are discussed in the paper’s conclusions.

Keywords: ecotourism; pseudo-ecotourism; sustainable development; Vietnam (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/5/4601/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/5/4601/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:5:p:4601-:d:1087698

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().