Brent Lovelock
Associate Professor
Co-Director, Centre for Recreation Research
Office: Commerce 4.44
Tel 64 3 479 8069
Email brent.lovelock@otago.ac.nz
Background
Brent is a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Tourism. His background is in natural resource management and protected area tourism and recreation. Brent's main research interest has been the application of sustainable tourism within protected natural areas. He has undertaken research in both Canada, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region, examining collaborative planning processes for sustainable tourism development. The research also considers the role of environmental non-governmental organisations in the implementation of sustainable tourism in protected areas, and examines their modes of operation with respect to this goal. Brent's interest in sustainable tourism has seen him become involved in regional tourism planning, and Brent successfully led a team of researchers in the development of a sustainable tourism strategy for the Catlins region in the south of New Zealand in 2004. The Catlins is a remote and peripheral tourism destination, but with a rapidly growing tourism industry - the challenges in this project were to identify strategies that protect the fragile marine wildlife resource and community values whilst fostering sensitive yet economically viable tourism in the area.
In his administrative roles, Brent is a course advisor for the BCom. Brent also coordinates TOUR 211 (Tourism Impacts and Evaluations), TOUR 212 (Tourism Development and Planning) and TOUR 418 (Destination Management Strategies).
Research Interests
Brent is a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Tourism and Co-Director of the Centre for Recreation Research http://www.crr.otago.ac.nz/ His background is in natural resource management and protected area tourism and recreation. Brent's main research interest is sustainable visitor use of protected natural areas. He has undertaken research in Europe, North America, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region, examining collaborative planning processes for natural resource management. His research focuses on the challenges in protecting fragile natural resource and community values whilst fostering sensitive yet economically viable forms of tourism and recreation.
A current major research interest involves consumptive forms of wildlife tourism and recreation - hunting, shooting and sportfishing. He has recently published a book on this topic (Tourism and the Consumption of Wildlife: Hunting, Shooting and Sportfishing (Routledge: London 2008)) that has been received as “…one of the best collections of empirical and theoretical works in tourism in recent years… This book is highly recommended” (Annals of Tourism Research, 35 (2008), pp. 842-843). Brent's current work on hunting involves cross-national comparative research on obstacles to the growth of hunting as a sustainable form of recreation/tourism, based on the work in Scotland, Poland, Bulgaria, and New Zealand. He is also involved in an international collaborative research project exploring recreational and touristic fishing as a sustainable economic activity within remote maritime communities – having undertaken field research on Stewart Island, the Chathams, and in the Lofoten Islands, Norway.
A further research focus considers constraints and access issues for recreationists and tourists. Brent recently published the findings from a study that explored links between physical mobility, environmental values and attitudes to the development of motorised access to the backcountry of New Zealand. In 2008/9 Brent led a team on SPARC funded research that investigates the participation of recent immigrants in outdoor nature-based recreation in New Zealand, and their attitudes to the natural environment. Brent is currently leading a team for a further SPARC funded research project that is considering commitment to a range of nature-based recreational pursuits – including tramping, mountaineering, freshwater angling and hunting.
Another area of research is the ethics of tourism. Brent has undertaken work examining the ethics of the travel industry with respect to travel to destinations with human rights issues. He is currently working on a book about tourism ethics.
Major Work
Lovelock, B.A. (ed.) 2008. Tourism and the Consumption of Wildlife: Hunting, shooting and sportfishing. Routledge: London. |
Selected Recent Publications
Lovelock, K., Lovelock, B., Jellum, C., & Thompson, A. (2011). In search of belonging: Immigrant experiences of outdoor nature-based settings in New Zealand. Leisure Studies 30(4), 513-529.
Lovelock, B.A. 2010. Disability and going green: a comparison of the environmental values and behaviours of persons with and without disability. Disability and Society, 25(4) pp.467-484.
Lovelock, B.A., Lovelock, K.M. & Normann, O. 2010. The big catch: Negotiating the transition from commercial fisher to tourism entrepreneur in island environments. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 15(3), 267-283.
Lovelock, B.A. 2010. Trains, planes and wheelchairs in the bush: Attitudes of people with mobility-disabilities to enhanced motorised access in remote natural settings. Tourism Management, 31(3) pp. 357-366.
Lovelock, B.A. 2009. Promotion of hunting and fishing tourism on the internet: A survey of national tourism organisation websites. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 14(2) pp.145-148.
Mura, P. and Lovelock, B. A. 2009. A Not So Little Italy? Tourist and Resident Perceptions of Authenticity in Leichhardt, Sydney. Tourism, Culture & Communication, 9(1-2) pp. 29-48.
McDonald, F., Thomson, A., and Lovelock, B.A. 2008. Back of the Envelope: Small and Medium Tourism Enterprises’ Approaches and Attitudes to Planning. Tourism Recreation Research, 33(3) pp. 265-277.
Lovelock, B.A. 2008. Ethical travel decisions: travel agents and human rights. Annals of Tourism Research, 35(2) pp. 338-358.
Lovelock, B.A. 2007. Obstacles to ethical travel: Attitudes and behaviours of New Zealand travel agents with respect to politically repressed destinations. Tourism Review International, 11(4) pp. 329-348.
Riza, Y. and Lovelock, B.A. 2006. Optimising economic returns from protected area tourism: Tourism-related income and expenditure trends of the Department of Conservation, New Zealand. Tourism Economics, 12(4) pp. 659-666.
Lovelock, B.A. & Boyd, S.W. 2006. Impediments to a cross-border collaborative model of destination management in the Catlins, New Zealand. Tourism Geographies, 8(2) pp. 143-161.
For a more complete list of publications and funded research grants/projects please see Further Publications and Funded Research Grants/Projects.
PhD and Masters Supervision - Current
PhD Donna Keen, High country narratives.
PhD Dzingai Nyahunzvi, Park commercialisation.
PhD Fernando Oyarzun, Tourism policy.
PhD Jovel Ananayo, World Heritage management.
PhD Geoffrey Bellamy, Heritage Tourism.
PhD Fiona Bakas, Handicraft Tourism, Gender and Sustainability.
Masters Owen Graham, Heritage tourism