The importance of worldview for sustainable tourism development on the Bruce Peninsula, Ontario

In this thesis worldview theory, sustainability, planning, tourism, and the UNESCO concept of Biosphere Reserves meet to focus on tourism operators located on Ontario's Bruce Peninsula. Understanding how these operators view the world has direct implications for how they can be expected to act within it. An appreciation for the complexity of tourist operators was realized through an analytic framework composed of two main worldviews; the dominant/mechanistic and the alternative/ecological. In the hermeneutical tradition of qualitative inquiry, differences in how operators make meaning of their world were recorded among respondents. This awareness set the stage for further investigations into how their worldviews could affect their willingness to accept and integrate concepts of sustainability into their businesses. The suggested process for encouraging a more ecologically-friendly worldview is one of personal change, known to adult educators as transformational learning. Since this approach is not known to have been applied and researched within a tourism context, it is suggested that this action and research be undertaken.