Project title
Exploring perspectives on desirable climate scenarios in the tourism sector by utilizing Lego Serious Play and GenAI
Research Unit
Primary investigator
Co investigators
Project period
2024/5/10 ～ 2025/3/31
Project summary
Local stakeholders play a significant role in overcoming the climate crisis that is facing the tourism industry, particularly through the development of sustainable tourism destinations. Despite this, governments and policy makers often neglect key local stakeholders in their policy making. This research focuses on the destination hosts’ perspectives, focusing on their view of the future sustainable development of their destinations. Uniquely, this research combines art and technology to create artistic interventions to communicate climate-related future visions which ultimately seeks to spark behavioural change. Moreover, a cross-country comparison will be explored by researching the perspectives of local hosts from Japan and Finland. The project adopts a preferable futures approach, whereby qualitative co-creation workshops will be organised with participants to tease out their visions for climate futures. Specific focus will be on the sustainable revitalization of rural tourism destinations, a key strategic priority for the tourism development in Japan and Finland. Technological software such as generative AI systems (DALL-E) will then be used to spark engaging discussions surrounding sustainable tourism destination development. This research is timely and provides both theoretical and practical contributions within the domains of sustainable tourism destinations and the climate crisis.
Activity and results reports
Peer reviewed journals:
- Tuomi, A., and Zainal Abidin, H. (Under review). Host Perspectives on Preferable Tourism Futures: Insights from Finland and Japan. Journal of Tourism Futures.
- Zainal Abidin, H. and Tuomi, A. (accepted for publication). Exploring preferable climate futures. Wakayama Tourism Review, 6.
Conference proceedings:
- Tuomi, A., Zainal Abidin, H., Tuominen, P., Ascencao, M. (2025). Convincingness of AI-generated Restaurant Reviews. In: Nixon, L., Tuomi, A., & O'Connor, P. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2025. ENTER 2025. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. eBook ISBN 978-3-031-83705-0
Conference presentations and participation:
- Tuomi, A., & Zainal Abidin, H. (2025, February 17-19). Using LEGO Serious Play to explore Host Perspectives on Preferable Tourism Futures [poster presentation]. 32nd ENTER Tourism Conference, Wroclaw, Poland.
- Tuomi, A., Zainal Abidin, H., Tuominen, P., Ascencao, M. (2025, February 17-19). Convincingness of AI-generated Restaurant Reviews [conference presentation]. 32nd ENTER Tourism Conference, Wroclaw, Poland
- Zainal Abidin, H., Tuomi, A., & Ab Rahman, N.A.F.W. (2025, January 13-15). Exploring Older Adults’ Views of Future Sustainable Destination Development. 4th ATLAS-Critical Tourism Studies Asia Pacific Conference, Hainan, China.
- Zainal Abidin, H., Rahman, A., & Tuomi, A. (2024, September 14-16). Exploring Preferable Climate Futures for Tourism Development: A Local Host Perspective from Japan and Malaysia [Poster presentation]. Malaysia-Japan Visionaries Conference (MJVC) 2024, Tokyo, Japan.
