About

Connor Clark is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Hospitality, Hotel Management and Tourism at Texas A&M University. His scholarly focus includes destination management, sustainable tourism development, cross-border tourism, natural resource management, nature-based tourism, capacity building, and community development. Dr. Clark has conducted research on tourism sustainability and resource management issues in Latin America, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the American West, and has been recognized with awards such as the Best Qualitative Paper Award at the Travel and Tourism Research Association Annual Conference in 2022. Prior to his current position, Dr. Clark spent a year as an Assistant Professor at Georgia Southern University, where he engaged with students through hands-on projects both within and outside the U.S. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Community Resources and Development with a Tourism Management emphasis from Arizona State University, where he received funding from the National Park Service for research on tourism development and ecological restoration in the Arizona/Sonora borderlands. His professional experience also includes work in sales, leadership, and consulting in the U.S. and Latin America, notably empowering small business owners in Peru. Dr. Clark is passionate about educating students, pursuing solutions to major challenges in the travel sector, and shaping future industry leaders.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Geography
• Public relations
• Environmental planning
• Environmental resource management
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Archaeology
• Business
• Environmental science
• Public administration
• Medicine
• Economics
• Marketing
• Ecology
• Media studies

Selected publications

• Rewilding as a destination development phenomenon: Examining community resilience through a systems thinking lens

  Tourism Management · 2025-05-27 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Cross-border tourism as an agent of environmental peacebuilding

  Journal of Sustainable Tourism · 2025-07-25

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Examining the competitive advantage of nature-based destinations: Applying a holistic resource-based theory framework

  Tourism Management · 2025-08-08 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This study examines the role of local resources in fostering a competitive advantage for nature-based tourism destinations in the Brazilian Pantanal by using our proposed holistic resource-based theory framework. Data for this study were collected through direct observations and in-dept interviews with 24 tourism and conservation stakeholders associated with a popular nature-based tourism destination in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil and several of its peer destinations. The findings reveal the essential role of innovative destination leaders in fostering stakeholder partnerships, strategic orchestration of resource portfolios, and capitalization of place-based resources to develop intimate experiences with local cultures and biomes, ultimately resulting in the destination's sustained competitive advantage. The study contributes to the fields of tourism and strategy research by offering a holistic resource-based theory framework that identifies diverse destination resources and the processes by which they can be sustainably leveraged to produce a competitive advantage for nature-based tourism destinations.

  PublisherDOI

• Screening the Use of Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGISs) in the Tourism Industry: A Scoping Review

  Tourism and Hospitality · 2024-11-22

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Tourism development should be economically viable, environmentally responsible, and aligned with community goals. Participation in decision-making ensures that community values are reflected in sustainable tourism guidelines. Traditional methods of public engagement in tourism planning include public meetings, focus groups, and interviews, as outlined in the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) framework, which ranges from education to empowerment. However, the rise of information technology and digital platforms has brought about new participatory channels, such as Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGISs), which use geospatial technologies to improve decision-making. This paper investigates the use of PPGISs in the tourism industry based on a thorough review of peer-reviewed literature from 2000 to 2024. By examining the use of PPGISs in tourism, the study identifies common characteristics and the scope of existing research, emphasizing how PPGISs can be applied across various tourism sectors. The study discovered that PPGIS is a credible alternative to traditional public participation methods and provides useful insights into residents’ perspectives on tourism-related issues. This study contributes to the tourism field by thoroughly understanding PPGIS applications, proposing future research strategies, and suggesting how these technologies can enhance public engagement and decision-making in tourism planning.

  PublisherDOI

• Building Community Resilience and Adaptive Capacity Through Investments in Tourism and Conservation

  Journal of Travel Research · 2024-12-25 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This study applies human ecology theory to examine community resilience and adaptive capacity in a nature-based tourism destination. Data were collected through a survey of 207 residents in Corrientes, Argentina in communities where internationally recognized efforts to drive tourism, protect large landscapes, and restore natural resources have taken place. The results of the analysis revealed six domains of community resilience through a confirmatory factor analysis and illustrated that tourism and conservation investments increase tourism involvement, which leads to direct and indirect paths of increases in community resilience and adaptive capacity. Multivariate relationships were detected between tourism involvement and four of the six identified community resilience domains, and between tourism involvement and adaptive capacity through three community resilience domains acting as mediating variables. Using human ecology theory as a framework, this study provides insights into how communities’ adaptive capacity develops through residents’ engagement in entrepreneurial and self-organization opportunities offered by tourism.

  PublisherDOI

• Polycentricity and Private-Led Governance of Natural Resources at the U.S.-Mexico Border

  Society & Natural Resources · 2024-11-29 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 6 Connecting landscape-scale ecological restoration and tourism: stakeholder perspectives in the great plains of North America

  2024-07-17

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This grounded theory research seeks to understand stakeholder attitudes towards tourism development and ecological restoration around a landscape-scale ecological restoration project in Montana, USA. Due to the limited number of landscape-scale ecological restoration projects across the globe, research on stakeholder attitudes and the relationship of tourism with such projects is missing. Only recently have researchers begun to take an interest in the relationship between tourism and rewilding, a subfield of ecological restoration that involves the restoration of wildlife. The results derived from interviews with various stakeholder groups, including nonprofit conservation groups, a national wildlife refuge, the local ranching community, a county commission, and local residents working in the tourism industry demonstrate important, emerging themes, such as contrasting worldviews, ecological paradigm, landscape-scale land management, and lack of shared community vision. As local ranchers are particularly threatened by landscape-scale ecological restoration efforts, integrated threat theory is used to describe intergroup conflict in a tourism and ecological context. A revised tourism area life cycle (TALC) model using a tourismscape framework and core-periphery concept is proposed to understand the interrelationships between regional tourism and landscape-scale ecological restoration areas. The importance of bottom-up solutions, community-driven initiatives, and stakeholder engagement in the planning process is emphasized.

  PublisherDOI

• Crisis management, tourism and international boundaries: the case of the US-Mexico border

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2024-04-09 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter analyzes the tourism implications of crises that are common in border regions. After examining crises in borderlands in general, the chapter uses the Mexico-US boundary as a key example to illustrate the multiplicity of challenges that exist along international borders. Based upon the US-Mexico case, we provide insights on the need for border tourist destinations to plan for and mitigate the impacts of the various types of crises that are especially prevalent in borderlands, including crime, violence, illegal immigration, natural resource management challenges, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. We provide a brief history of tourism and conflict at the Mexico-US border and highlight some of the most intense challenges this and other border regions face. The chapter focuses on how these challenges hinder cross-border tourism and collaboration and tarnish destination image. Our analysis emphasizes the role of cross-border communication, equal partnerships, and collaboration in managing and mitigating crises and suggests challenges to, and opportunities for, transfrontier crisis management planning.

  PublisherDOI

• Cross-Border Tourism and Community Solidarity at a Militarized Border: A Photo Elicitation Approach

  Journal of Travel Research · 2023-08-31 · 9 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Despite increased militarization along international borders, border communities share elements of natural and cultural heritage. This shared heritage invokes a form of solidarity whose influence on cross-border tourism and bordering processes is understudied. The purpose of this study is to analyze how community solidarity influences tourism and border processes at the highly militarized U.S.-Mexico border by using photo-elicitation. Data were collected from 21 participants from Mexico and the U.S. A direct and indirect analysis of the interviews and photos found major themes and common focal points within photos, and the findings demonstrate binational solidarity for heritage and a desire for sharing this heritage with visitors. The paper contributes a conceptual framing of how borders are reinforced through militarization and softened through tourism, cross-border collaboration, and biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration. The implications of these findings for border theories and frameworks are discussed in further detail.

  PublisherDOI

• Tourism and ecological restoration across borders: a political ecology approach

  Current Issues in Tourism · 2023-10-07 · 8 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This study uses political ecology and social and environmental justice frameworks to examine stakeholder attitudes towards tourism development and ecological restoration in a cross-border context. The purpose of this paper is to develop conceptual frameworks for understanding stakeholder attitudes towards cross-border tourism and ecological restoration that occur in the context of uneven power relations. Data were collected through personal observations, secondary sources such as legal documents and reports, and 56 in-depth interviews and two focus groups with tourism and conservation stakeholders from the US-Mexico border. The findings revealed how abundant social and environmental justice issues, such as unequal social and ecological mobility, access to resources, and power relations impact stakeholder attitudes. This study offers a new conceptual framework that considers socioeconomic, cultural, and religious/spiritual ties to a border landscape, aimed at understanding the injustices related to stakeholder in tourism development and ecological restoration initiatives. The equitable distribution of benefits derived from tourism and landscape restoration is further emphasized in the conceptual framework, as is the need for expanding social and ecological mobility. The paper contributes to the political ecology of cross-border tourism destinations by augmenting social and ecological mobility as a critical component of developing nature-based tourism in border areas.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Gyan P. Nyaupane

  20 shared

• Dallen J. Timothy

  4 shared

• Newsha Salari

  Universitat Ramon Llull

  1 shared

• Mahdi Gheitasi

  Universidad Rovira i Virgili

  1 shared

• Christine N. Buzinde

  1 shared

• Andrea Lichterman

  Apple (United States)

  1 shared

• Xiao Xiao

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Best Qualitative Paper Award, Travel and Tourism Research As…
• Dr. Mark and Mrs. Judy Searle Graduate Scholarship recipient…