Rate My Professor Susan F. Mackenzie

Associate Professor Susan Houge Mackenzie serves in the Department of Tourism at the Otago Business School, University of Otago. She joined the department in 2017 after a career as a tourism practitioner, holding diverse global roles such as adventure guiding and tourism consulting. Previously, she collaborated with regional tourism organizations on regenerative planning and management processes. Her applied projects encompass mental skill training workshops, development of management guidelines for adventure tourism operations, and consultations with government, non-profit, and tourism agencies, including New Zealand riverboarding, the United States Forest Service, New Zealand Ministry of Tourism, and the History Channel. Mackenzie's expertise spans tourism destination development, social sustainability, host community well-being, tourism worker well-being, adventure tourism experiences and guiding, psychological well-being, optimal experiences like flow, high-risk and extreme sports, whitewater river guiding, and safety and risk management.

Her research integrates psychology and tourism, developing and applying positive psychology theories—such as flow, self-determination theory, and reversal theory—to adventure tourism, sport, recreation, and education. Primary focuses include links between nature-based adventure and well-being for tourists, recreationalists, guides, and host communities; the regenerative tourism movement in Aotearoa with emphasis on community well-being; translational research for practical industry applications; and outdoor adventure to promote physical activity and science education. She utilizes mixed methods, including qualitative research, surveys, autoethnography, and stimulated recall via head-mounted cameras. Mackenzie contributes to the field through advisory roles on the Tourism Central Otago board, Adventure Tourism Research Association, and Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, as well as serving as Associate Editor for the Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education and Leadership and Guest Editor for Tourism Review International. Key publications include Lovelock, B., Houge Mackenzie, S., & Pung, J. M. (2026), Linking wellness tourism and community well-being within a regenerative tourism paradigm, Tourism Recreation Research; McKeeman, H., Houge Mackenzie, S., & Lovelock, B. (2026), Fostering community wellbeing via regenerative destination planning: An Aotearoa New Zealand case study, Journal of Destination Marketing & Management; Houge Mackenzie, S. (2025), Psychological well-being and adventure tourism: Implications for people and places, in Routledge international handbook of adventure tourism; Buckley, R. et al. (2025), Matching destination difficulty and participant capability in outdoor recreation and tourism, Journal of Outdoor Recreation & Tourism; and earlier works such as Expanding the Flow Model in Adventure Activities: A Reversal Theory Perspective (2011) and Co-creation and experience brokering in guided adventure tours (2016).