NS34 Session 21

 

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Title: Human–Nature Relationships within Leisure Contexts

Organisers: Marianna Strzelecka, Arash AkhshikSolène Prince and Marleen Schwarze

Affiliation: Linnaeus University

 

Description

Outdoor leisure has long been a central arena in which relationships between humans and nature take shape and evolve. In Nordic contexts, outdoor leisure in natural environments is closely tied to shared cultural ideas about landscape, public access, and sustainability. Through leisure practices, people encounter and interpret nature in ways that influence how it is valued and cared for. In this sense, leisure becomes a setting where environmental meanings, attitudes, and even behaviors are formed. Yet human–nature relationships are being reshaped by ongoing social and environmental transformations, including climate change, energy transitions, urbanization, visitor mobilities, and the growing influence of digital technologies in everyday life. As many of the environments used for everyday leisure also function as spaces for tourism, understanding leisure–nature interactions in these spaces can offer insights relevant to ongoing discussions on making tourism an agent for good.
This thematic track invites critical contributions that explore human–nature relationships within leisure contexts. We welcome work that examines how leisure practices shape the ways in which nature is perceived, experienced, represented, and governed, and what this can mean for designing good tourism Contributions may focus on activities taking place in rural, urban, or coastal settings.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Human–nature relationships in everyday leisure practices
• Leisure in informal, overlooked, or marginal spaces, such as urban edges, brownfields, and informal green areas
• Questions of biodiversity, conservation, and environmental conflict that arise through leisure
• Emotional, affective, and sensory experiences that shape how nature is encountered through outdoor leisure
• Leisure that takes place in natural, semi-natural, or informally used green spaces
• The role of digital technologies (apps, social media, virtual environments, and tracking tools) in shaping experiences of nature in leisure and tourism
• Governance and spatial planning of leisure in natural environment

 

Abstracts

Title: The Impact of Digital & Virtual Technology on Visitors: The Experience Economy Model Tested at the LAVA Centre Interactive Volcano Show in Hvolsvöllur, Iceland
Authors: Einar Svansson, Bifröst University, and Bárður Örn Gunnarsson

This research examines visitor experience at LAVA Centre, an interactive volcano exhibition in Iceland, through Pine and Gilmore's Experience Economy framework. As technology plays an increasingly central role in museums and cultural tourism, understanding how it mediates education and shapes visitor experience becomes essential. The research employs mixed methods combining surveys, focus groups and expert interviews. Building on Mehmetoglu and Engen's (2011) measurement scale from research at Maihaugen museum and Mesetovic's (2020) ice cave tour research, the study applies Pine and Gilmore's four dimensions to a technology-enhanced exhibition context, investigating whether technology functions as a fifth dimension or as an enabler across education, esthetics, entertainment and escapism.

Survey data from autumn 2025 reveal an exceptionally high Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 82, exceeding Iceland's national average of 76. Entertainment scored highest while escapism scored lowest yet showed the strongest correlation with NPS. Regression analysis indicates entertainment most significantly influences overall satisfaction, whereas escapism primarily drives NPS. Qualitative findings reveal technology operates as an enabler rather than separate dimension. Seamless technology amplifies learning and engagement, while technical failures create substantial barriers. Comparative analysis shows delivery medium fundamentally shapes which dimensions prove salient. Where visitors experience authentic environments directly, esthetics emerges significant while entertainment does not. At technology-mediated LAVA Centre, entertainment dominates while esthetics loses significance. Education remains consistently important across contexts.

The research demonstrates Pine and Gilmore's framework retains validity in digitally mediated environments while requiring contextual adaptation. For Iceland's volcano tourism and museums broadly, findings suggest technology investments yield optimal returns when enhancing existing dimensions rather than creating new ones.

 

Title: From Choice to Perception: Visitor Responses to Offshore Wind Farm Scenarios
Authors: Marianna Strzelecka, Linnaeus University, Solène Prince, Marleen Schwarze, and Arash Akhshik

The expansion of offshore wind energy is widely recognized as a key climate mitigation strategy; however, its integration into coastal landscapes raises persistent concerns about how visual changes may influence visitor destination choice. Existing research presents mixed evidence, indicating that responses to offshore wind development are shaped not only by the physical characteristics of wind farms but also by underlying values, beliefs, and environmental attitudes. This study examines how coastal tourists evaluate offshore wind farm scenarios and how these evaluations relate to landscape perception and pre-existing attitudes. A choice experiment was conducted with respondents from Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, in which participants were presented with four simulated coastal scenarios where turbine presence, distance from shore, number of turbines, and accommodation price were systematically varied. After selecting their preferred option, respondents evaluated the perceived qualities of the chosen landscape, allowing landscape perception to be analysed as emerging from choice rather than as an externally imposed judgement. In addition, measures of perceived benefits of renewable energy and climate change worry were collected prior to scenario exposure, enabling an examination of how these attitudinal orientations relate to both scenario selection and subsequent landscape evaluations. The results contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how visitors interpret and evaluate energy landscapes in tourism contexts.

 

Title: Participatory Mapping of Ecosystem Service Values in the Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve
Author: Marleen Schwarze, Linnéuniversitetet

UNESCO Biosphere Reserves are multifunctional landscapes recognized as sources of ecosystem services and as laboratories for sustainable development. They also function as nature-based tourism destinations that integrate conservation, recreation, and local livelihoods, making them important experimental spaces for sustainable tourism development.

Participatory mapping of ecosystem services can be used to identify where different social groups value ecosystem services within a Biosphere Reserve. This approach provides spatially explicit knowledge that can support land-use decision-making and planning processes. However, knowledge about the spatial distribution of ecosystem service values in Biosphere Reserves, and the practical usefulness of such knowledge for decision-makers, remains limited.

Through the application of Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) in the Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve in Sweden, this study identifies (i) hotspots and (ii) bundles of ecosystem service values, as well as (iii) spatial patterns of these values across the three Biosphere Reserve management zones. In addition, the study evaluates the usefulness of PPGIS-derived knowledge by analysing qualitative data from a workshop with local practitioners.

The study contributes to strengthening an ecosystem service perspective within tourism research. The findings reveal distinct spatial patterns of ecosystem service values that reflect the reserve’s management goals. Values were primarily clustered around wetlands and densely populated areas, with respondents frequently mapping places associated with outdoor recreation, biodiversity, and existential values. The results emphasize the importance of cultural and regulating ecosystem services. Practitioners considered the PPGIS outputs useful for nature restoration and spatial planning, highlighting their potential to support participatory tourism planning and help address conflicts between tourism development and conservation.

 

Title: Seeing Authenticity: A Photo-Ethnographic Exploration of Visitors' Lived Experiences at Niah National Park
Author: Brian Kee Mun Wong, Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus

This study examines visitors’ authentic experiences at Niah National Park through a photo-ethnographic approach. Grounded in Symbolic Interactionism (Blumer, 1937), the research explores how meanings of authenticity are socially and naturally constructed through interaction, and draws on Existential Authenticity (Wang, 1999) to interpret visitors’ embodied and affective experiences. Using researcher-produced photographs, supported by field observations and reflective narratives, the study investigates how authenticity emerges through engagement with natural landscapes, environmental variability, and socio-material relations.

Findings indicate that authenticity is not inherent in the site but is co-constructed through visitors’ interpretive engagement with informational signage, visual cues, and the material environment. In the absence of guided narration, visitors actively derive meaning from prehistoric cave formations, wall drawings, and the visibility of traditional bird nest harvesting structures, which collectively evoke imaginaries of past human life. Simultaneously, existential authenticity is experienced through sensory immersion in the cave environment, including encounters with natural light penetrating the cave, darkness, humidity, and physical movement across long walkways. These embodied experiences foster feelings of connection, self-reflection, and temporal transcendence. The study further shows that authenticity is relational and material, emerging from interactions among visitors, infrastructures, wildlife, and the cave ecosystem, as well as from the interplay between managed access and spontaneous environmental encounters.

Theoretically, this research advances understanding of authenticity as both socially negotiated and personally lived within a visual methodological framework. Practically, it highlights the importance of preserving environmental conditions and enhancing interpretive materials to support meaningful human-nature engagement.

 

Title: A Sensory Ethnography of the Wintry MTB Trailscape
Author: Vesa Markuksela, University Lecturer, University of Lapland

Mountain biking on winter trails offers a distinctive setting in which human movement, technology, and Arctic environments become entangled through multisensory practice. This paper examines mountain biking (MTB) on snow-covered trails in Finnish Lapland, near the Arctic Circle. Winter riding unfolds through a human–bike hybrid integrating technology, bodily movement, sensory attunement, and rhythm, while remaining fundamentally dependent on the material qualities of the trail environment. Lapland’s “real winter” confronts riders with snow, cold temperatures, variable polar/light, and continually shifting surfaces. Together, these conditions generate a distinctive multisensory trailscape that enables, constrains, directs, and redirects biking practices, shaping movement, perception, and experience.

The study examines encounters within this wintry MTB trailscape through more-than-human practice theory, which foregrounds how action emerges through affective and multisensory entanglements among humans, technologies, and landscapes. Empirically, the analysis draws on a seven-year sensory ethnography of winter trail riding and trail building, enabling close attention to embodied movement and the interplay of the senses in the immediate environments where riding takes place.

The findings show how the meanings of winter MTB emerge through the interplay of sensory experience, movement, and control. Riders continually negotiate bodily balance, tactile feedback from snow, visual orientation, and rhythm while responding to the trail’s shifting materiality. In this process, the trail is not merely a passive backdrop but actively participates in shaping practice.

By illuminating how sensory encounters constitute the experience of winter riding, the paper contributes to discussions on human–nature relationships in outdoor leisure. In tourism contexts where leisure and tourism share the same landscapes, such multisensory engagement supports immersive and environmentally attuned nature-based tourism experiences.