Residents' perceptions on tourism impacts

The limited explanatory research on residents' perceptions of tourism impacts has resulted in an underdeveloped theoretical orientation of research on this subject. This paper presents a social exchange process model as a theoretical basis for some understanding of why residents perceive tourism impacts positively or negatively. The model is based upon the concept of the exchange relation. Propositions are derived from the model to test the relationships between the model's components. These propositions have been developed from inferences based upon the social exchange literature.     

Social impacts of tourism : Host perceptions

This study investigates the pergeptions of the residents of Nadi, Fiji, towards the impacts of tourism. A survey of 199 households revealed that residents (most of whom were dependent on the industry for their livelihood) supported the current magnitude of tourism and favored its expansion. Despite this very clear and generally positive view, the respondents identified specific negative and positive impacts that, in their view, affected the community. The results suggest that residents of communities dependent on tourism can clearly differentiate between its economic benefits and the social costs, and that awareness of certain negative consequences does not lead to opposition towards further tourism development.     

Residents’ perceptions of community tourism impacts

This study investigated residents’ perceptions of tourism’s impact on communities. Data were collected via a statewide survey, using social exchange theory; results suggest residents recognize many positive and negative consequences. Those who feel tourism is important for economic development, benefit from it, and are knowledgeable about the greater positive impacts, but do not differ from others with respect to perceptions of tourism’s negative consequences. It is becoming clear that broad-based education and awareness campaigns may be a step toward increased understanding of the industry and, ultimately, greater support of the benefits to a community.     

Residents with camera: Exploring tourism impacts through participant-generated images

There are calls for increasing the uptake of visual methods in tourism research. This paper makes a distinct contribution to visual methodology by focusing on images generated by local residents. We examine the opportunities and challenges of utilising participant-generated photo-elicitation. Specifically, through participant-generated images, this research studies tourism impacts in the coastal destination of Imbassaí, in the state of Bahia in the Northeast of Brazil. The unusual experience of looking through a camera on their lives, enabled participants to reflect on and make sense of their social worlds in relation to tourism impacts. Photo-elicitation effectively engages participants and provides more nuanced insights into social phenomena. There are however organisational, ethical and practical challenges that need to be considered.     

Comparisons of stakeholder perceptions of tourism impacts in rural eastern North Carolina

The purpose of this study was to discover if differences in perceptions of tourism's impacts on a rural community existed between four stakeholder groups in eastern North Carolina: residents, entrepreneurs, government officials, and tourists. Data were collected from stakeholders using a mail-back questionnaire, which included nine Likert-style questions inquiring about attitudes and perceptions of tourism development in the community. To discover if differences existed, an ANOVA test was conducted for each question, followed by a Scheffe test to determine which groups were different. The analysis indicated that there were differences in the perception of tourism impacts between stakeholder groups. More specifically, the results of the ANOVA test indicated that there were statistically significant differences between stakeholder groups for seven of the nine questions. Differences were identified between the entrepreneurs and government officials, residents and governmental officials, residents and entrepreneurs, and residents and tourists.     

Exploring tourists' purchase intention of food-related souvenirs

This study aims to understand the association between food souvenirs and a destination. Most related studies focused on locally consumed food while this study aims at food that can act as a souvenir. Food image plays an important role in shaping destination brand and perceived tourist value, which consequently contributes to purchase intention for food souvenirs. In short, the study examines how local food consumption improves perceived tourist value, which eventually contributes to tourists' intention to purchase food-related souvenirs. 355 tourists who purchased brown sugar steamed cake while visiting Penghu Island in Taiwan were surveyed. The study performed structural equation modeling to test the mediating effects of destination brand and perceived tourist value on souvenir food image prompting purchase intention for food souvenirs. The findings indicate that food souvenirs image contributes more strongly through perceived tourist value than through destination brand.     

Residents' perceptions of the environmental impacts of tourism in the Lake Bosomtwe Basin,Ghana

This study investigates residents' perceptions of tourism's physical impacts in the Lake Bosomtwe Basin in Ghana. Data were based on a resident survey conducted in the basin in January 2006. Residents perceived both positive and negative impacts of tourism development, but were more inclined to the positive side. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the district assemblies in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism should start managing the impacts, and also educate the local population on the dangers of underestimating the negative impacts of tourism on the environment.     

Exploring the impacts of internal crisis communication on tourism employees insights from a mixed-methods study

Internal crisis communication is a critical yet understudied component in crisis management in tourism and hospitality management. Guided by the language expectancy theory, this study tested the effects of message frequency and transparency on internal crisis communication outcomes among tourism employees. This study adopted a mixed-methods approach. The qualitative component included 20 interviews, and the quantitative component involved a national survey of 804 completed responses from tourism workers. The qualitative findings showed that following the onset of a major crisis, tourism employees often expect timely and transparent communication from their employers. Effective communication enhances the employer-employee relationships and employers' commitment to the organization. The quantitative findings supported these notions and indicated that transparent internal crisis communication reduces turnover intentions. The findings provide insights into conceptualizing internal crisis communication in tourism by incorporating message frequency and transparency. This paper also offers practical implications and suggests several future research areas.     

Online destination image: Comparing national tourism organisation's and tourists' perspectives

This study examines the perceived and projected online destination images (DI) manifested in tourist-generated content (TGC) and national tourism organisation (NTO) generated content. Through visual content analysis and mise en scène analysis of photographic data as well as content analysis and perceptual mapping analysis of textual data, the differences between perceived and projected online DI of Eastern Taiwan were explored. TGC and NTO contents were both found to have similarly represented Eastern Taiwan as a destination abounds with “natural environment”, “infrastructure”, “specific activities”, and “tourist attractions”. However, several important DI dimensions were under-represented in the NTO content, for example, “food and beverages”, “transportation”, “information” and “accommodation”. The findings further reveal that the TGC textual content tended to outperform NTO textual content in reflecting affective DI; and photographic content, in general, was more effective in conveying affective attributes. The findings provide useful insights for practice and future research in DI management.     

Host perceptions of sociocultural impacts

This paper investigates community perceptions of the sociocultural impacts of tourism and examines the extent to which they coincide with their classifications made by academic writers. A literature review revealed a range of sociocultural impacts related to tourism development, the tourist–host interaction, and resulting influences. A resident survey was undertaken which showed that perceived impacts reported by informants coincided with the majority of those identified in the literature. This suggested that the general analyses of the sociocultural impacts of tourism could be applied to the perceptions of residents of a small British coastal tourist resort.     

Motivation and involvement in adventure tourism activities: a Chinese tourists' perspective

ABSTRACT

This research aims to explore Chinese tourists' motivations and involvement in adventure tourism activities, as well as if and how personality and location affect their motivation and involvement. Using a survey that collected 252 responses, this research suggests that stimulus-avoidance and intelligence seeking are the two most important motivational forces. Results indicate that respondents would prefer overseas locations for these activities due to perceptions of greater safety and security, better service, and higher-quality facilities. Respondents who rated themselves as “open” or “closed” in personality differ regarding motivations and involvement. Practical implications are discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided.     

Residents' perceptions of wine tourism development

Wine trails have been studied insufficiently within the tourism literature despite of their recent rapid development worldwide. In response, this study examines residents' perceptions of wine tourism development in terms of personal benefits and community impacts. It also explores whether residents' socio-demographics and levels of wine enthusiasm, and wine trails' tourism characterization influence residents' perceptions. Following a stratified random sampling procedure, residents living along two wine trails in the Piedmont region of North Carolina (U.S.) were surveyed. Results indicate that residents are neutral in their perceptions of the Piedmont wineries in terms of both personal benefits and community impacts. Residents' socio-demographics and level of wine enthusiasm, as well as the comprehensiveness of wine trails' tourism amenities were significantly associated with residents' perceptions. Results also indicate that personal benefits mediate residents' perceptions of community impacts. In addition to the oretical and methodological contributions, this paper outlines management implications for wine trails.     

The influence of human elements in photographs on tourists' destination perceptions and intentions

Photographs with a human element are powerful in influencing viewers' perceptions and decision-making processes. However, rare quantitative evidence was detected about the best human presenting percentage and how it affects the intention. In this study, we decoded how human elements (presence or absence, low or high proportion) affect viewers' perceptions and intentions in nature/culture-based photographs. Innovatively, three deep learning models and two experiments were integrated. The results indicate that (1) in general, maintaining the proportion of human elements at less than 1% leads to the best positive perception, and (2) the viewers demonstrate different perceptions and intentions in viewing nature-based and culture-based photographs with the human element. Theoretically, we bring a new perspective and approach to understanding the marketing value of human elements in tourist-generated photographs. Practically, we provide specific and different clues in choosing photographs to promote cultural and natural destinations regarding human elements.     

Exploring bad faith in tourism

Previous applications of existential philosophy to tourism have focused on the work of Martin Heidegger but have neglected the contribution of Jean-Paul Sartre. This paper examines the relevance of Sartre's concept of ‘bad faith’ to tourism. Bad faith is a way of living based on inauthenticity, self-deception, and disregard for the Other. The paper explores the manifestation of bad faith in three contemporary scenarios: flying and its implications for climate change; conforming to the expectations of other people through social media engagements; and sex tourism. It argues that bad faith - compromising and denying individual freedom – underpins many tourism practices. The paper ends by considering future opportunities for using Sartre's philosophy to understand tourist experiences.     

Influence mechanism of tourists' impulsive behavior in E-sports tourism: Mediating role of arousal

While e-sports tourism has gradually become popular among young adults—especially with China’s e-sports industry in full swing—certain problems have emerged with this new type of tourism. This study uses arousal theory as a basis for exploring the influence mechanism of e-sports tourists' impulsive behavior in Chinese collective culture. A sample of 562 participants in China were surveyed online to test the research model, which included 10 hypotheses. The empirical results indicate that: Firstly, the system quality of the Information System (IS) success model and the human stimuli influence arousal; secondly, tourists' motivation for e-sports tourism, group honor concerns, and identity in the Chinese context also positively affect arousal, and then influence impulsive behavior; and thirdly, arousal has a mediating effect between the environmental stimuli (except information quality) and impulsive behavior. This paper innovatively proposes that the physical and psychological elements of environmental stimuli could significantly affect arousal levels, thus in turn influencing impulsive behavior in e-sports tourism. Furthermore, the conclusion section discuses practical suggestions for the organizers of e-sports tournaments, such as adjusting environmental stimuli to achieve optimal arousal levels.     

Exploring the impacts of tourism on the livelihoods of local poor: the role of local government and major investors

This study identifies the impacts of tourism development on the living conditions of local poor and examines the role of local government and major investors in this process. A village in southern China was chosen as the research site. Because of tourism development, the villagers had all been relocated and initially, it was thought that their housing conditions had improved. Nevertheless, the relocated houses were later criticized as being small and of low quality. The traditional local means of livelihood also changed, from farming and fishing to mainly being employed in paid work. Yet, because of the high cost of living, the villagers' actual living standards had not greatly improved. This study claims that, since the municipal government took a developmental approach and investors followed market logic, the interests of the local poor were sacrificed to tourism development. This suggests that if tourism development is to reduce local levels of poverty, the interests of the local community should be front and center. Particularly in cases when tourism development tends to cause the transformation of local means of production, supportive initiatives and proper supervision and management strategies are needed in helping the poor adapt to new conditions.