Data Collection Methods
Discuss About The Economic Promise Of Ecotourism Conservation.
The researcher will rely on both primary and secondary data to develop the proposed study. Notably, a mixed research design will be used to strike a balance between the biases and limitations of employing one method (Aguinis, 2006). In environmental surveys, the mixed research approach is widely adopted in surveys involving ecotourism (Li, 2011). This study will adopt mixed research design to explore the relationship between price and ecotourism in Australia. According to Nagahara (2004), mixed methods research involves philosophical assumptions in addition to other methods of inquiry. As a methodology, it is blended research approach entails philosophical assumptions offer guidelines for collection and analysis of data and the combination of quantitative and qualitative data in a particular survey or series of studies. As Keightley (2010) explain, the central premise of a mixed research design is that the utilization of qualitative and quantitative methods in combination offers better identification of research problems than either of the method when used alone. Keightley (2010), also elaborates that qualitative and Quantitative methods complement each other to enhance complete analysis of a study. Vandenberg (2009) also notes that employing numerous sources of data and more than one techniques of collecting data strengthens the results of a survey by supporting their cross-validation.
Briefly, quantitative research entails quantifying the research problem through the generation of numerical data or data that can be changed to statistics (Aguinis, 2006). According to Vandenberg (2009), quantitative research is usually used to quantify behaviors, sentiments, attitudes, and other defined factors and generalize outcomes from a larger sample population. Quantitative surveys employ quantifiable data to uncover patterns and formulate facts in research (Keightley, 2010). According to Dellaportas (2006), quantitative methods of data collection are more structured compared to qualitative methods of data collection. Quantitative methods of data collection include the different forms of surveys such as mobile surveys, online surveys, and paper surveys, telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews, longitudinal surveys, online polls, systematic observations and website interceptors.
On the other hand, qualitative studies capture the reality in extensive details and are mainly useful when the emphasis is on a natural or contemporary setting with human as the main subject of investigation (Nagahara, 2004). According to Vandenberg (2009), a qualitative survey can be used to designate, create or test a theory. Notwithstanding, the qualitative research method has been disapproved for missing systematic generalizability (Vandenberg, 2009). Nonetheless, it has been contended that the aim of the qualitative survey is not to demonstrate inferences concern a large number of populations, but instead to generalize back to a theory or an application (Vandenberg, 2009).
Qualtrics Survey
This survey will be piloted in Kakadu National Park, Australia where the investigator expects to survey a total of 244 local and international visitors at the start of their visit. The research will include commercial tourist residing at the two eco-lodges in the park or holiday at the park for a day by independent visitors and coach roaming by own vehicles for a day visit or camping excursion. Notably, the researcher will use convenience sampling to sample the participants to be involved in the study and who will be required to take a self-administered questionnaire. This survey tool will contain questions about their stimuli for the visit, environmental outlooks and natural area involvement. A list of seven social inspirations and fascination motivations, grounded on the Higginbottom and Scott (2008)) survey will be included. Besides, the participants will be required to recognize many of these motivations as related to their current visit. As such, four of these motivations will be made familiar to all survey instrument will be used as a basis for recognizing the participants as Eco-tourists as per the Hewett (2014) model. To investigate the natural area involvement levels, the participants on excursion will be requested to specify the duration in days they will be spending touring natural zones, which will be computed as a fraction of the total days spent on the entire vacation. Notably, respondents on a day tour will be requested to approximate how regularly they visit natural areas on an annual basis. Environmental attitudes will be measured using a scale based on the Ecological Social Paradigm (ESP) formulated by Olsen, Lodwick and Dunlap (Higginbottom and Scott, 2008). The use of ESP scale will aim to overcome the confines of earlier worldview or paradigm scales by including four indicators of ecological beliefs drawn from the four signs of environmental values drawn from the alternative Environmental Paradigm of Stronza (2007) and New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale of Beaumont (2001). The weight will be on human relationships with the total ecosystem instead of on specific environmental issues. The original ESP scale comprises eight sets of contradictory statements, and for each set of participants, they will be asked to indicate where their belief or value will lie on a five-point Likert scale between the two comments. To avoid response bias and for brevity, the researcher will reduce the range to eight single statements, four anti-ESP and four pro-ESP, with each group including two value statements and two 16 belief statements. Notwithstanding, the participants will be required to assess the comments on a five-point scale from strongly disagree to agree strongly. Overall scores will be computed and classified as sturdy ESP holder, moderate ESP holder, weak ESP holder, or non-ESP holder. On this base, the participants who will be classified as sturdy ESP holders will be regarded to have strong environmental attitudes.
Ethical Considerations
Prior to rolling out the survey to respondents, approval will be got from the University. To optimize on the response rate, the researcher will make use of two data collection methods for each survey: i.e., online study and posting the survey tools to managers of the sampled Kakadu National Park who will not respond through the other means. Also, phone surveys will be piloted with the Kakadu National Park managers. Because the researcher expects this population to have many issues to do with the time constraints, a shopping voucher will be offered as motivation to those who complete the survey. Come early June; the polls will be emailed through Qualtrics Online Survey Software (Peer et al., 2012) to all managers of Kakadu National Park with an invitation letter elucidating the aim of the study, the incentives that will offer if they will reply to the survey, and the confidential kind of the feedback. Besides, the researcher will also be sending a weekly reminder to respondents who not have responded to the study for three weeks. Concurrently, the researcher will mail surveys to managers and directors from whom complete answers will be missing. Each envelope will contain the questionnaire, invitation letter, and another envelope with the return postage and address. Furthermore, the directors of Kakadu National Park who will not have replied will be called on the daily basis by the researcher during the last two weeks of June.
Ethical values are ordered into four: absence of informed consent, deception, harming the participants, and invasion of discretion (Humphreys, 2016). To start with, the researcher will adhere to the ethical principle of the absence of informed consent. According to di Norcia (2006), eligible participants should get as much info necessary to choose whether to engage in a survey or not. For the planned researcher, the researcher will give out information to the respondents regarding the study and his contact details for further questions by the participants when a needed arises. Another ethical issue that the researcher will observe is the risk of harming both the respondents and the business to be surveyed (Aguinis, 2006). The danger of hurting the participants in this survey will be avoided by making the data collection instrument anonymous and by keeping the responses as confidential as possible. Furthermore, to protect the participation of the nominated organization in the proposed survey, the researcher will keep their names unidentified. Other than the above two ethical values, the researcher will also take note of the invasion of the privacy principle of research ethics (Schwab, 2006). The researcher expects that at one point the participant could regard some inquiries to be so sensitive and thus would prefer not respond. For the looming study, the researcher will allow the participants to skip some questions that will deem too sensitive to them. Last, of all, the researcher will also adhere to the principle of deception in research ethics. According to Schoonenboom (2017), deception in research occurs when a participant is made to accept that a survey is a different thing than what it is. For this research, clear clarification of the purpose of the study will be given by the researcher. Besides, the researcher will be willing and remain available to answer any arising questions from respondents when needed.
The collected quantitative data will be analyzed using IBM-SPSS (version 22 software), and the analytical technics that will be used will include paired sample T-test, Spearman correlation, descriptive statistics, and multiple regression analysis. Correspondingly, exploratory data analysis will be conducted at an earlier stage to give evidence for choosing the type of inferential statistics like multi-collinearity and normality (Nagahara, 2004). For instrument validity in the proposed study, the researcher will use content validity because according to Schoonenboom (2017), it is sufficient to evaluate the goodness of an instrument. It warrants that the objects in the study are appropriate, sufficient, and demonstrative enough to be certified by a panel of judges (Schwab, 2006).
The first section of the questionnaire will be designed to collect data concerning the number of eco-tourist in Australia that arrive at Kakadu National Park on a monthly bases and the prices they are charged during their visits. In the proposed study, the researcher will use a paired sample T-test to compare the mean score of the overall tourist visits and price charges using Multiple Linear Regression and Spearman Correlation.
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ewett, P. (2014). Cooper Creek Wilderness: perspectives on maintaining a successful ecotourism-driven private protected area in Australia. Journal of Ecotourism, 13(1), pp.64-70.
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