Episode Twelve: Christy Hehir on the psychology of tourism, individual lasting impact and the importance of local economies.

Dr Christy Hehir is an environmental psychologist with a PhD on how tourism can better aid conservation. Christy is passionate about understanding how tourists engage with the natural world and the long-term impacts tourism can have on individuals’ subsequent pro-environmental behaviour towards our planet’s sustainability. Committed to science communication, Christy was recently awarded a fellowship at the Royal Geographical Society and currently works as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey - researching the future of polar tourism. Prior to academia, Christy had 10 years’ travel industry experience across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Her polar adventures ignited when she travelled to Antarctica with Students on Ice, having been elected as the UK’s student representative for International Polar Year. Show Notes: - https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/dr-christy-hehir -https://happywhale.com/home -