Are Coastal Residents Turning Blue in the Blue Economy?

Abstract

The World Bank (2017) defined the blue economy (BE) as a strategy that seeks to promote economic growth, social inclusion, and the protection or improvement of livelihoods while ensuring the environmental sustainability of ocean and coastal areas. In many countries, marine wildlife tourism (MWT) is identified as one of the priorities of the BE strategy. Research on the socioeconomic impacts of MWT has focused on macroeconomic assessments; however, the impacts on local residents have been insufficiently researched, particularly on their well-being experience. To address this knowledge gap, this study focuses on MWT and presents a new framework for the well-being experience of community residents based on White's (2010) theory of well-being. The framework includes both subjective and objective dimensions and covers economic, social (community), ecological, and cultural aspects of well being experience. It aims to comprehensively reflect the level of community development and people's living status in the context of MWT and to provide a theoretical research framework and a policy support tool for the promotion of sustainable community development. The framework was applied to Sanniang Bay, China, a community that develops dolphin-watching tourism, to explore how MWT resulted in wellbeing experiences for local residents. Semi-structured interviews were used as the data collection method with 12 stakeholders including local residents were interviewed. The findings showed that the development of BE will not always result in a well-being experience for local communities and residents. The local residents should have the right to participate in decision making about ownership rights, distribution of resources and benefits, and BE management.