Environmental Virtue Ethics : Wildlife Tourism in Sweden

Sammanfattning: With the permission of Swedish Allemansrätten, the Right of Public Access, allows people to interact with the natural environment... . Environmental ethics, discuss about the relationship between man and nature, and is hence clearly connected to the questions of wildlife tourism. Great part of the previous literature has focused on the environmental ethics in tourism from the perspective of utilitarianism or deontology, with special concern in animal rights, animal ethics and animal welfare. However, questions like ‘what kind of people will do good to the environment?’, ‘What are the characteristics of these people?’ are among those that still need to be discussed in the field of wildlife tourism research. According to the theory of environmental virtue ethics, man's attitude towards nature originates from the internal quality and character of human beings. Whether it is the western scholars Thomas Hill and Geoffrey Frasz, or the ancient Chinese School of Confucianism and Taoism, they all put forward their own opinions on the characters required by the virtue ethics of the environment. In this thesis, documentary writing and network media records of wildlife tourists in Sweden are used as empirical materials to demonstrate the behavioral and psychological manifestations of the three characters of environmental virtues ethics. These three characters reflect the harmonious interaction between man and nature, and contribute in the theoretical discussions of of ethics in Tourism Studies.