Mémoire
Résumé : Many small island economies rely on tourism to sustain livelihoods. However, small islandecosystems are particularly vulnerable to environmental change and are locally impacted bytourism activities. To effectively manage environmental impacts, studying the humandimensions of nature conservation is crucial. We investigate the tourism-conservationinteractions in Pulau Kapas, a small tropical island in Malaysia, by combining two stakeholderbasedapproaches – Q Methodology and Social Network Analysis – to map the key actors intourism and nature conservation, and to analyze how different perceptions of actors relate totheir position in the social network. We identified four coexisting discourses, but theirdistribution among stakeholders did not explain the social networks’ architecture. Rather, thesocial network’ architecture was explained by the geographical scale of action and sector ofactivity of stakeholders in three isolated groups (“modules”): the islanders, the conservationeducationactors, and the governance actors, which were connected thanks to influentialbrokers. All four discourses supported nature conservation and agreed on future tourismdevelopment on the island, but not all stakeholders acknowledged the anthropogenic impactson Kapas. Our analysis of stakeholders’ social influence and perceptions reveal diverse intereststo be taken into account to build tourism and conservation arrangements in Kapas, andhighlights the importance of the intrinsic value of nature. The methodological approach andinterpretation tools used in this study are applicable to studies on natural resourcemanagement in in other socioecological systems in Malaysia and beyond.

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