Submit a Manuscript to the Journal
Journal of Ecotourism

For a Special Issue on
Ecotourism in the Metaverse? The Use of Virtual and Augmented Realities and Digital Interventions in Ecotourism

The use of online technologies to generate telepresence (Steuer, 1992) and immersive experience has created a new mode of convenience in the tourism industry and attracted considerable attention from tourism providers and scholars (Cho et al., 2002; Mascho & Singh, 2014; Yung & Khoo-Lattimore, 2017; Kim & Hall, 2019; Verma et al., 2022). This evolution is driven mainly by the restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, when people are encouraged to socially distance, stay in their home environments, and reduce unnecessary travel (El-Said & Aziz, 2022; Zhang et al., 2022). With new technological advances, such as "virtual reality", "enhanced reality" and "live broadcasting", it has generated an avenue that is perceived to aid the recovery of the tourism industry (Bae & Chang, 2021).

Given that tourism provides the primary economic rationale for the conservation of biodiversity (Hall, 2010), one area of virtual tourism that has attracted substantial attention is the provision of virtual tools in developing and promoting ecotourism, nature and protected area (Jarratt, 2020). This was significant as a means of trying to generate funds for conservation initiatives and communities that had been affected by the loss of ecotourism and wildlife tourism (Corlett et al., 2020; Verkerk, 2022), but also for urban dwellers who were otherwise unable to connect with nature (Glenn, 2021; Wu & Lai, 2021). As Spenceley et al. (2021, p. 113) observe, “the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how dependent some conservation areas and many local communities are on tourism, and also the physical and mental health benefits of nature for visitors. It has also shown how vulnerable tourism is to forces beyond its control.” Indeed, many discussions of the impacts of COVID-19 on tourism and the ‘post-pandemic’ tourism system have considered the extent to which digital and virtual tourism may become a significant part to respond to the challenges, and its potential to lead to some sort of sustainable transformation (Akhtar et al., 2021; Lu et al., 2022).

Sustainability issues are increasingly being connected to the application of digital and virtual technologies in natural areas (Fennell, 2021; Glenn, 2021). This is significant as while tourism clearly benefits from protected and natural areas (Spenceley et al., 2017), it has also contributed to their loss, whether directly through species disturbance and tourism-related development leading to habitat loss and land-use change, or more indirectly through the introduction of alien species, cumulative change, and its contribution to climate change (Hall, 2022). Therefore, it indicates a growing interest in learning how virtual technologies can be used not only as a promotional tool (An et al., 2021), but as a means to change the visitor behaviour of ecotourists and interpret protected areas (Skibins & Sharp, 2018; Hofman et al., 2022), or even become a substitute for visiting highly sensitive environments or species (Filter et al., 2020; Glenn, 2021). In view of the increasing importance of integrating digital and virtual technologies into the development of ecotourism and nature-based tourism, this special issue of the Journal of Ecotourism calls for papers on the following and other topics:

• the use of virtual and augmented realities in promoting ecotourism destination
• the capacity of virtual tourism to be a substitute tourist experience
• the market characteristic of virtual ecotourism participants
• virtual and augmented realities and natural heritage interpretation
• the capacity of virtual realities to generate pro-environmental behaviour in natural areas
• virtual realities and community-based social marketing
• virtual, digital and augmented technologies and nudging in ecotourism
• ethical issues of virtual ecotourism
• virtual ecotourism and protected area management
• virtual ecotourism and issues of accessibility for minority populations (i.e. disabled, elderly)
• virtual ecotourism, health and wellbeing
• virtual ecotourism in urban areas and attractions
• virtual ecotourism’s impact on the tourism experience (flow, authentic, multisensory, or interactive experience)

Enquiries and expressions of interest should be submitted to the guest editors of this special issue

• Please select special issue topic "Ecotourism in the Metaverse" when submitting your paper to the Journal of Ecotourism's ScholarOne page.
• The special issue will accept, subject to the satisfaction of referees, research articles, field notes and research notes
• With a final submission date of 28 February 2023 we would expect all successful papers to be published and available in 2023.

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