The ABC of tourist attitudes towards wind industry in Skåne : affective, behavioral and cognitive dimensions

Sammanfattning: The expansion of Swedish wind energy grid has come at the cost of environmental, economic and social controversy, in which the issue of landscape quality change plays a prominent role. Tourism, an industry highly reliant on visual consumption of the landscape, is especially sensitive to this change. Scholars have repeatedly harvested evidences of a weak, but negative correlation between wind power development in the area and tourist attitudes, but seldom have scrutinized those attitudes in more depth in a qualitative study, concentrating primarily on quantification and estimation of potential financial losses. In my thesis, I employ a three-pillar framework of the attitude structure (cognition, affection and behavioral intentions) to determine what constitutes the attitudes of foreign visitors towards wind industry in the Swedish county of Skåne, as well as implications of this knowledge. The analysis of 61 semi-structured interviews and photo-simulation test have shown that people have been, for the most part, positive towards wind industry in the area and no one has claimed that it could change his or her intention to come. However, insights the visitors gave, have demonstrated that these positive attitudes were expressed towards wind power industry in general, rather than wind turbines in particular, which, on the other hand, were more often perceived with ambivalence or negatively – a stance known as Double Edged Visitor Attitude. The structure of the attitudes have mirrored this divide: to justify a positive predisposition towards wind industry people primarily resorted to reasoning, while talking about wind turbines in the vista they have concentrated on mixed feelings they provoke. The discussion of those feelings have revealed an information of potential interest for decision-makers and destination marketing organizations: (1) a few smaller turbines embedded in the changed landscapes, rural or urban, were perceived better, than bigger ones in the natural scenery or near historical sites, though up until certain saturation point; (2) wind turbines could be of interest to some, especially people unaccustomed to such a view, as a potential tourist destination.