Social responsibility of theme park

A theme park is a business. Taking this fact into account, what do you think is the social responsibility of theme parks?

In the week 16, we watched two documentary films about the social and ethical responsibilities of theme park. The first documentary film called “Black fish” mainly concentrated on Tilikum – a killer whale which was captured from its mother since it was very young and trained for people’s entertainment. During its captivity, Tilikum resulted in the deaths of three individuals. The film then explained the reason why the killer whale had such aggressive behaviors and attitudes which turned out to be the consequences of captivity. At the beginning, the theme park of Sea World was wrong in capturing young killer whale for entertainment performances because this action was illegal, and even after the death of trainer which was caused by Tilikum, they refused to release it to the natural environment due to the profit that the killer whale brought back. That was a very serious ethical problem. After that, people started to protest “Captivity doesn’t work” and demanded the theme park to release the killer whales. At this point, the reputation of theme park was badly damaged as a result of paying their attention only in how to generate more profits.

The second documentary film was about the dolphins which were captured and killed by Japanese. While watching this film, I was shocked by an outrageous fact that “People watch the performances by dolphins and eat dolphin at the same time”. I really couldn’t understand why they would sell dolphin meat in a dolphin theme park? They violated the animal rights and simultaneously poisoned people with mercury. Maybe it is a normal matter for Japanese guests, but I wonder how international visitor would react if they pay a visit to that kind of theme park?

After watching these two commentary films, I understood that a successful theme park management is not only about human resource, marketing, or spatial innovation but also about practicing the responsibilities toward the society and surrounding environment. And Walt Disney Company can be seen as a representative example. The Walt Disney Company is very famous for the program of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) which concerns about the natural environment, communities, and labor standards. Besides, the company continues to donate for charity for natural disasters victims and practices volunteerism around the world. 

A theme park is a business. Therefore, its ultimate goal is making money. It is an undeniable fact. However, a theme park cannot just focus on profit generation and ignore its social responsibility because society support is the first important factor that it needs to be successful.