Does fish farming impact on tourism in Scotland?

Aquaculture is an important industry for rural Scotland, in particular for the west coast and the islands. Tourism is also important to Scotland's economy and depends heavily on the country's landscape. Targeted research was undertaken to assess whether fish farming impacts tourism in coastal areas of Scotland. This was accomplished through face‐to‐face interviews with tourists and telephone interviews with tourism‐related businesses and aquaculture businesses at three case study locations: Outer Hebrides, Shetland and Oban and Mull. A large percentage of respondents (87% of 120 people surveyed) had seen fish farming before, although half of them had not seen fish farming at the case study location. Respondents were asked to consider how the current levels of fish farming affected their perception of the area, impact on scenery, natural environment, recreational activities and willingness to re‐visit based on a scale from strongly negative, slightly negative, no affect/neutral, slightly positive, strongly positive or do not know. The majority of respondents stated that current levels of fish farming had no effect on the aforementioned parameters. When asked to consider further development or expansion of fish farming, visitors remained neutral to all, except for the impact on the scenery and the natural environment, where approximately half of the responses were negative. This research provides qualitative evidence that the current levels and future developments or expansion of aquaculture operations will not affect visitors' willingness to re‐visit the case study sites or affect their key recreational activities.