Resumen de Assessing Tourists' Perceptions of Climate Change on Mountain Landscapes

Bruce Prideaux, Alexander Coghlan, Karen McNamara

• The increasing populanty of mountains as a tourism resource has coincided with groxving concerns about the probable impact of climate change on sensitive mountain ecosystems and the long-term sustainabilitv of these ecosystems. This paper outlines and tests a six-step model that synthesizes scientific research into the probable impacts of climate change on mountain ecosystems with tourism research that evaluates how tourists are likely to respond to visual changes in mountain landscapes. The model was tested in the Wet Tropics rainforests of Queensland, Australia and found to have a predicative capability on possible tourist response to climate change impacts in mountain destinations.