Place stewardship among last chance tourists

摘要

With reference to virtue ethics and ethics of care, this paper discusses ethical challenges of tourism consumption and the last chance tourism marketplace. Survey results and a visitor segmentation of travellers to two climate threatened destinations show that most visitors are not willing to engage in carbon offsetting, and that willingness is related to their sense of connection to a destination. Findings extend current discourses on last chance tourism by situating visitors' lack of care for climate threatened destinations as a response to a tourism market that normalizes the consumption of socio-ecological decline. This paper also enhances understandings of stewardship promotion within the last chance marketplace by advancing a visitor segmentation approach and six distinct last chance tourist profiles.