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Abstract : Despite the expressed willingness to reduce its impact on the environment, The tourism industry is one of the main threats to 50% of the world's 252 natural world heritage sites. As Europe is the most visited destination in the world and given the intensifying pressure on protected natural areas, this article seeks to define how to improve pro-environmental behaviours in natural protected areas by stakeholders in Europe. For that purpose, this paper aims to address how European policies influence stakeholders' motivation to implement these strategies and their pro-environmental behaviours. This paper highlights that the main tools for implementing sustainable development policies in protected natural areas are information, knowledge, norms, and values. This paper reports part of the early stages of a PhD research, and the results reported are therefore theoretical and point to a knowledge gap. These are expected to inform the empirical part of the PhD research, to be conducted during the second year of the PhD, and therefore not reported in this paper.
Keywords: Motivation, pro-environmental behaviour, policy, implementation, sustainable tourism, protected natural areas.
1. Introduction
Despite the tourism industry's expressed willingness to reduce its impact on the environment and society, its footprint is increasing (Gössling & Higham, 2020; Lenzen et al., 2018). Some academics believe that this disconnect may be partly related to policymakers becoming facilitators of economic activities rather than adjusters of desirable changes (Dredge & Jamal, 2015, p. 1044) by adopting a utilitarian approach to sustainable development as a tool for growth (Sigala, 2020).
Nevertheless, the interest in sustainable tourism is increasing, especially in nature-based destinations (Silva et al., 2019). According to a 2019 reports by the N2K group, nature-based tourism accounts for 20% of international travel worldwide. Its market share is growing six times faster than the conventional tourism market (Silva et al., 2019). Natural protected areas are highly attractive destinations with nearly 8 billion visits per year worldwide (Balmford et al., 2015) and an estimated 9-10 billion visits by 2050 (Leun et al., 2018). This rise in visitation is coupled with higher pressure on ecosystems and a greater need for access and infrastructure (Sharma et al., 2021). According to the IUCN (IUCN, 2020, p. 30), the management and the state of 50% of the world's...