An IT and GIS exploration of web-based nature tourism enterprises in the rural agricultural sector in Texas

This paper addresses the role of IT in facilitating economic diversification for rural agricultural enterprises in Texas. The development of Texas INFRONT, an innovative database that acts as a clearinghouse of information for enterprises, is described. GIS mapping and analysis was applied as an innovative investigative tool to examine the relationship between a changing economic environment and the rise of online nature tourism businesses by rural producers. Spatial analysis for clusters and dispersions of nature tourism businesses using the internet was conducted. This revealed a variety of phenomena such as the concentration of nature tourism enterprises around urban centres. The results indicate that GIS-based spatial modelling informed by theoretical frameworks such as cultural ecology, while not common in the field of tourism research, can reveal important information about IT innovation and use by rural producers diversifying into nature tourism enterprises supported by the web, under conditions of economic hardship.

[1]  Andrew Neil Skadberg.  Nature tourism in cyberspace : an examination of its geography and character in the network , 2002 .

[2]  Michael A. Jochim,et al.  Strategies for Survival: Cultural Behavior in an Ecological Context , 1981 .

[3]  Pip Forer,et al.  Information Technology and Tourism: A Challenging Relationship , 2002 .

[4]  S. Stonich,et al.  Political ecology of tourism , 1998 .

[5]  H. Simon,et al.  Models of Man. , 1957 .

[6]  E. Parzen.  On Estimation of a Probability Density Function and Mode , 1962 .

[7]  W. Buckley.  Sociology and modern systems theory , 1967 .

[8]  M. Rosenblatt.  Remarks on Some Nonparametric Estimates of a Density Function , 1956 .

[9]  Hannes Werthner,et al.  Information Technology and Tourism — A Challenging Relationship , 1999 .

[10]  S. Mccool,et al.  Agritourism: Motivations behind Farm/Ranch Business Diversification , 2001 .

[11]  J. Burt,et al.  Elementary statistics for geographers , 1995 .

[12]  S. Britton,et al.  The political economy of tourism in the third world , 1982 .

[13]  Miles Phillips,et al.  Nature Tourism: A Guidebook for Evaluating Enterprise Opportunities. , 2004 .

[14]  Matthew Zook.  The Web of Production: The Economic Geography of Commercial Internet Content Production in the United States , 2000 .

[15]  A. Poon.  Tourism, Technology and Competitive Strategies , 1993 .

[16]  Raymond L. Bryant,et al.  Political ecology: An emerging research agenda in Third-World studies , 1992 .

[17]  Peter U.C. Dieke,et al.  Tourism and development policy in the Gambia , 1993 .