Who is Saving Whom? Equifinal Paths to a Meaningful Experience Design through Marine Watching Tours

Marine protected areas are luring grounds for visitors who are willing to watch endangered species before they disappear forever. Hereafter, strategies to tackle the challenges of sustaining these fragile areas in one hand, and managing visitors in another are eminent. In this regard, visitor’s deportment that benefit self and visiting areas are notably well-researched. Yet, the conventional studies in the tourism-environmental domain often take a reductionist approach towards the complex issue of human behaviour that is criticized for its shortcomings. Therefore, to fill this gap, this dissertation develops and tests a theoretical model, drawing on the complexity theory and emerging concepts, i.e. dualistic-passion paradigm, and mindfulness notion, to predict the potential source of pro-environmental behaviour. The results indicate the complexity of the antecedents forming pro-environmental behaviour and the existence of contrarian cases that runs counter to the main effect in linear approaches. Therefore, following Fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of a sample from visitors to marine turtles in Cyprus, the study found seven unique causal recipes that lead to a high level of pro-environmental behaviour. Moreover, the study found 2 recipes that lead to low level of pro-environmental behaviour. Following predictive validity of the configural model, implications for theory and practice are presented. Further, guidelines for future research and limitations are discussed. Keywords: Pro-environmental Behaviour, Mindfulness, Passion, fsQCA, Marine Turtles, North Cyprus