Some difficulties with aspects of the data collection process

One of the biggest challenges in conducting my research was assembling local villagers’ definitions of the term “ecotourism”, which is a Western concept that has come about within the last two decades. Although a direct identifying question like “Do you have ideas of what does ‘ecotourism’ mean?” was asked, many local villagers were unable to answer such questions, due to theirlow levels of education. The majority of old people, in particular, were illiterate. However, this does not mean local participants have no idea. Instead, this is largely because local people had never thought about the definition of ecotourism before. Meanwhile, participants were also aware that they were not well educated; hence, they were not confident in providing me what they saw as a correct answer. When the participants had difficulty responding to these questions, they tended to politely decline to take part in the interviews. Before conducting my field work, I had concerns of this nature; however, there were no apparent solutions.

In order to encourage the participants to express their ideas confidently, I started with explaining what I knew about the concepts, which I had learnt from Western countries. After that, I listed several key elements that characterised this concept in the literature. Then, I asked my participants whether they agreed with these aspects or whether they had any other opinions. Another technique I used was to break down the abstract questions into several simple and concrete questions. For example, instead of asking people whether they had any ideas about the concept of “ecotourism”, I asked the participants questions like “have you ever heard of the term of ecotourism?”, “what kinds of activities do tourists do in your village?”, and

“do you think these tourists are well educated and behave appropriately when visiting your village?”

The research found that there were a certain number of participants who preferred to answer “Yes” or “No” questions. However, such answers rendered little data. Hence, I made efforts to encourage the participants to talk at length by reflecting on their own personal experience. For example, after asking a question like whether ecotourism has brought any benefits, the participants were further asked “why do you think so, could you give me an example that has happened in your daily life to illustrate this?” In some cases, the participants had their own thoughts, but were unable to find appropriate words to express them clearly. In that circumstance, the answers had to be prompted, and my task was to help them to fill in the words, in order to avoid the interviewees feeling embarrassed.

Another problem which occurred during the interviews was that some participants often drifted off to topics unrelated to the research. In that case, I had to politely interrupt and redirect discussion back to the research topic. Basically, I carried out the majority of interviews by myself; however, there were cases when my hostess accompanied me to conduct interviews. The presence of my hostess had both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, she provided much assistance in introductions, explanations and communications. Given the fact that I was an absolute stranger to local residents, the presence of my hostess facilitated the research process, and her support also gave me confidence. After the interviews were conducted, some participants commented that because I was accompanied by their own villager, they felt a kind of security, and they became more willing and comfortable to participate in my interviews.On the other hand, I was also aware that her presence may influence the other participants’ willingness to share their own views. Hence, in the circumstance when my interviewees were the persons my hostess was familiar with, I invited her to take part together as well and encouraged her to share her views. When my interviewees were the persons that my hostess was

not familiar with, I explained my worry to her and politely suggested she went home after she introduced me.

It can be seen that building trustful relationships and rapport with local people was quite significant in smoothing the way for conducting interviews. Many local residents may not have felt comfortable with semi-structured interviews, but they were quite happy to talk to me informally. Hence, I started by chatting with them casually, and when these participants felt more relaxed and confident, I would then turn to ask them my research questions. Both the information collected from formal and informal interviews contributed to the findings of my case study, but from different angles. After the participants met me several times in the village conducting my research, people were familiar with my daily routines. Consequently, they became more willing to share their personal experiences with me on their own initiative.

Careful preparation before conducting either semi-structured or informal interviews was important in showing respect towards the interviewees and obtaining a favourable impression from the participants. However, no matter how well one is prepared, there can always be unexpected difficulties, which, in turn, require flexibility. Being flexible and open was found useful in doing research, as was highlighted by Scheyvens and Nowak (2003). Meanwhile, persistence was also relevant and necessary in completing the research, since the process of collecting data was filled with frustration, depression and other negative feelings.

In addition to the above problems discussed, several other difficulties emerged in the process of doing this research. Accordingly, there were some changes made in my predetermined plan, concerning the list of predetermined key interviewees, and the interview questions, when I realised that the previous plans were not feasible. Firstly, before I arrived at the research area, I had planned to interview at least ten villagers who provided accommodation for tourists, and whose lives would be directly

influenced by tourism development. However, after I arrived, I found only one such guest house, which was confirmed by my host. As a result, the previous plan needed to be changed; with the number of this type of participants reduced to one.

Secondly, the two key participants I planned to interview were unable to take part: the leader of the village, who initiated ecotourism, was busy attending a variety of conferences and was dealing with a great number of local affairs; while the manager of the Tengtou Travel Company politely refused to participate in my research. Subsequently, the leader of the village introduced another local official to participate in my interviews. Similarly, the manager of the travel company also introduced one of the clerks who was willing to participate.

At that time, I felt very frustrated and was quite disappointed. I spent many hours in the archive office, consulting a variety of secondary materials instead. By chance, I found that the current manager was new, while the former manager had been in that position for the last five years. Through the help of the hostess, I acquired the contact number of the former manager and successfully made an appointment with him. There was another important person who participated in the interview, the assistant of this ex-manager, who had also been working in Tengtou for last fifteen years. This interview was indeed one of the most rewarding.

The third important change I made in the field was using questionnaire surveys to collect tourists’ views towards ecotourism, instead of focusing on conducting informal interviews. As has mentioned before, the general duration of the tour was fairly short, which is partly due to the hot weather. It was not appropriate and convenient to take them too much time to ask research questions. Thus, although I joined the tour and chatted with several tourists, the information generated from the casual interviews was far from sufficient, with the limited time of tourists. As suggested by one of my supervisors, I adopted questionnaire surveys, as a complement to formal interviews, in order to collect more in-depth views from

tourists.

The local villagers were hospitable and kind, and were really willing to help me with my research. However, they thought the amount of information was more important to me than the quality of information given. Hence, they made efforts to provide me with a large amount of information and suggested that I put it all in my thesis. It took me a long time to explain to these people the nature of my social investigation and research questions.