Associate Professor Karen Hughes

Associate Professor Karen Hughes is affiliated with the School of Business at The University of Queensland, where she lectures in sustainable tourism and visitor management. Her research interests include interpretation, environmental education, and ecotourism, with a focus on how interpretation can influence visitor behavior and environmental behavior change. She has supervised multiple PhD, Masters, and honours students in areas such as interpretation and environmental behavior. Hughes is also an affiliate of the Centre for Marine Science and has contributed to various research projects, including studies on wildlife tourism, conservation learning, and the impact of interpretive experiences. Her work has been published in several academic journals, and she has collaborated with institutions such as James Cook University and Queensland University of Technology.

Karen Hughes is a researcher at the University of Queensland with a focus on understanding visitor behavior and environmental learning in tourism and conservation contexts. Her work explores how tourists engage with conservation messages, the role of interpretive practices in wildlife and ecotourism settings, and the impact of tourism experiences on conservation behavior. She also investigates the effectiveness of virtual tourism experiences in promoting environmental awareness and the factors influencing visitor satisfaction in cultural and natural sites. Her research highlights the importance of aligning tourism practices with conservation goals to foster sustainable visitor behavior.