A qualitative paradigm was used to determine the relevance of the peak experience as a factor of continued involvement in skydiving participation. Data sets from the literature, an interview process, and personal documents were collected, coded, analysed and interpreted for the purpose of understanding the nature of the skydiving experience. The research, which indicated the frequency and signi cance of a 'peak experience' to skydivers, provided an insight into the nature of the skydiving experience and the signi cance and importance of the experiential component for continued participation. The three sources of data relating to the skydiving experience provided a similarity across all respondents to such a degree that it was possible to conclude that a 'peak experience' was a common experience among veteran skydivers. So rewarding was the peak that it represented the most important factor explaining why veteran skydivers continued to jump.

Smallholder farmers resident in marginalized communities in the uplands of Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) have been subject to agricultural reforms and policies requiring adaptation of their rural livelihood systems and adoption of new agricultural technologies. Structured interviews with farmers explored their perspectives and experiences when developing economically viable, locally adapted and diversified livelihood and farming system strategies. Agricultural productivity was dependent on cultivatable land and forest biodiversity, while agricultural strategies embedded knowledge, information and ideas to enable farmers to adapt to changing conditions. Political, social, economic and environmental factors have influenced smallholder farmers in their preference and uptake of new technologies and activities. Opportunities to trial new technologies and further support, advice and information from extension officers and projects, combined with market opportunities and access to credit, will enable some farmers to find sustainable production alternatives. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

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With a rapidly growing domestic and international tourism industry, the government of Vietnam has taken a number of tourism-related initiatives since early 1999. These include the issuing of an Ordinance on Tourism, which provides the legal and policy foundations for developing tourism with due regard for conserving biodiversity and ensuring social, cultural, and environmental sustainability, and the proposal to revise the existing Tourism Development Master Plan to produce a Tourism Master Plan for Sustainable Tourism Development in Vietnam. Through these initiatives the government of Vietnam has moved towards planning the management of tourism to ensure sustainable outcomes, and ecotourism and cultural tourism have been proposed as preferred tourism development options. One destination focus of this preferred tourism option is the protected area system of Vietnam. This article presents a series of themes as key areas for discussion, to assist Vietnam as it endeavors to assess the current proposed Tourism Master Plan (2001–2010) as a means of achieving national development objectives. A month-long ecotourism training workshop for protected area managers was held in Hanoi in February–March 2000. Through this workshop, four primary themes were identified as presenting major challenges for those with responsibility to balance conservation with increasing tourist visitation: the structure and administration of the protected area system, tourism infrastructure, providing for the needs of local communities, and effective communication across all relevant stakeholders. This article explores these challenges based on the review of a range of in-house reports and documents, the recorded views of Vietnamese government officials, academics, and protected area managers, discussions with and surveys of workshop participants, and visits to a number of national parks and tourist locations.