Abstract
The lack of standards pertaining to wild animal welfare practices in tourism creates an opportunity to introduce soft regulations to improve public accountability and foster positive change. We developed a rating and ranking system to embed the ideologies of a non-governmental organisation to improve wild animal welfare practices, acting as institutional entrepreneurs to gain pragmatic legitimacy within tourism distribution channels. The new system aims to create change in three ways: (i) informing, (ii) ordering, (iii) surveyance and control of wild animal welfare. We candidly report on the methodological choices behind the system's design and implementation. We evaluate tourism distribution channels on four aspects, their: (i) policy and commitment statements, (ii) target setting and performance measurement, (iii) industry engagement and (iv) consumer awareness initiatives. An analysis of data from 12 international companies in 2020 and 2022 demonstrates how the system allows for shallow engagement in wild animal welfare practices, yet also offers the potential for significant improvements. We reflect on three methodological challenges: (i) quantification and commensuration during system design, (ii) the availability and credibility of data sources and (iii) the transparency of results.