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Abstract
While ecotourism research has comprised a considerable portion of the sustainable tourism literature since the term was first coined, many gaps remain that limit the maturing of this field. First, there is no operational measure of ecotourism that aligns with the three consensus tenets of ecotourism. Chapter 2 addresses this by developing the Ecotourist Identification Scale (EIS) as a tool to assess interest in the tenets of ecotourism. Second, no study has explored the influence of symbolic conspicuous consumption in the ecotourism market. To address this gap, Chapter 3 explores the ability of symbolic conspicuous consumption, alongside a more traditional model of environmental values, to predict intention to engage in ecotourism. The results of this study indicate that the EIS is a valid and reliable tool for identifying travelers interested in the tenets of ecotourism and that symbolic conspicuous consumption predicts ecotourism intention to a greater extent than environmental values.