Study explores participatory art in wildlife tourism research: full analysis

A new Animals paper is pushing wildlife tourism research in a more visual, participatory direction. In “Circles of Connection: Visualizing Human–Nature–Animal Bonds Through Participatory Art in Wildlife Tourism,” Yulei Guo and David Fennell argue that language-based surveys can miss important dimensions of how visitors understand animals, nature, and their own place in those relationships, particularly across age groups, cultures, and educational backgrounds. Their answer is a participatory art method aimed at making those relationships visible rather than only verbal. (mdpi.com)

The paper lands in the middle of a wider shift in animal-based tourism scholarship. Fennell’s earlier work has focused on tourism ethics and animal welfare, while recent studies from Guo and Fennell have examined visitor codes of conduct, panda welfare benchmarking, and tourists’ perceptions of governance and conservation at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Across that research, a recurring theme is that visitor management works best when it goes beyond rules and taps into understanding, empathy, and participation. (tandfonline.com)

That context matters because the Chengdu Panda Base is not a niche site. According to the authors’ recent Animals paper on visitor perceptions, the facility is the world’s largest ex situ giant panda conservation center, and visitor volume rose from 1.89 million in 2014 to 9 million in 2019 before the pandemic. High traffic, strong public emotion around pandas, and repeated visitor-management issues have made the site a useful case study for understanding how public sentiment intersects with welfare and conservation goals. In 2024, for example, the base publicly issued a lifetime ban to a visitor who threw objects into a panda enclosure, underscoring how fragile the boundary can be between affection for animals and behavior that puts them at risk. (mdpi.com)

While the full “Circles of Connection” article was not readily surfaced in search results, the abstract provided and related publications make the study’s direction clear: the authors are testing visual participatory methods as a way to capture relational meaning that conventional questionnaires may flatten or exclude. That builds on Guo’s more recent work on panda-themed environmental art, which found that participatory art can foster ecological awareness in wildlife tourism settings. It also aligns with the authors’ co-design approach to panda welfare, which explicitly brings together animals, tourists, managers, and researchers rather than treating welfare as a one-way expert assessment. (accscience.com)

Expert reaction specific to this paper was limited in publicly indexed sources, but the broader scholarly response to this line of work has been visible through peer-reviewed publication and follow-on studies. Review materials for the authors’ 2024 welfare benchmarking paper show outside reviewers generally viewed the co-design concept positively, even while suggesting refinements. More broadly, recent related work from the same research network has argued that engaging and empowering tourists through education, participatory evaluation, and digital tools could improve both public awareness and the effectiveness of animal welfare and conservation initiatives. That suggests the new paper is part of an expanding effort to treat visitors not just as compliance problems, but as participants in welfare culture. (mdpi.com)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, especially those working in zoos, aquariums, wildlife parks, sanctuaries, and conservation breeding programs, this study points to a practical challenge: animal welfare is influenced not only by enclosure design, husbandry, and medicine, but also by how humans interpret what they’re seeing. If participatory tools can reveal where visitors feel empathy, confusion, entitlement, or misunderstanding, they may help teams design better education, sharper behavior standards, and lower-stress visitor experiences for animals. In that sense, the paper sits upstream of clinical care, but still inside the welfare conversation. (mdpi.com)

There’s also a communication lesson here. Veterinary and welfare teams are often asked to explain why “close” or emotionally satisfying animal encounters may still be inappropriate, stressful, or unsafe. Research that maps how people visualize their bond with wildlife could help professionals anticipate those expectations and respond with messaging that is more effective than signage alone. That may be especially relevant in high-profile species programs, where social media attention can amplify both support and problematic visitor behavior. (mdpi.com)

What to watch: The next question is whether these arts-based methods stay descriptive or become operational. Watch for studies that connect participatory art findings to measurable outcomes, such as visitor compliance, welfare literacy, conservation support, exhibit redesign, or reduced animal disturbance, as well as whether similar methods spread beyond panda tourism into other wildlife attraction settings. (accscience.com)