Potential of the Adventure Tourist as a Cross-boundary Learner for the Conservation of Ethnoscape

―A Case Study of Minami-Alps Biosphere Reserve―

Abstract

This study focuses on adventure tourists who have begun to regard ethnoscape preserved well in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves as tourism resources. Adventure tourism induces tourists’ internal change through the accidental learning and discovery from ethnoscape. Therefore, this study focused on this learning and discovery process and hypothesized that adventure tourists are regarded as cross-boundary learners. It focused on the non-cognitive abilities that ensure this learning ability, and investigated how these abilities are linked to the internal changes through encounters with ethnoscape. As a case study, a qualitative comparative analysis of the relationship between these abilities, behavior, and the internal change of foreign adventure tourists in the Minami Alps Biosphere Reserve in Japan provided some support for the hypothesis. As cross-boundary learning is based on mutual learning, the results suggest that adventure tourism may encourage local residents to learn to reserve the ethnoscape.