Title of Paper

Re-conceptualizing the Social Carrying Capacity of Tourism Destinations to be More Inclusive to Residents of the Community

Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Casey Moran is a PhD student in the Recreation, Sport, and Tourism Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He research focuses on the impact of tourism development on residents, cultural or heritage tourism, and the interplay of power dynamics in tourism for development.

Dr. Christine Vogt is a Professor Emeritus and former director of the Center for Sustainable Tourism in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on tourism information search, resident attitudes toward tourism, natural-resource based tourism and sustainable community tourism development.

Dr. Kathleen Andereck is a Professor in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on the tourism experience from the perspective of both visitors and residents including resident attitudes toward tourism, cultural and natural-resource based tourism, sustainable community tourism development, and the tourism experience.

Dr. Evan Jordan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Wellness Design in the School of Public Health at Indiana University. His research focuses on the impacts of tourism on the physical and mental health of residents of host communities. He is particularly interested in tourism’s impact on stress, emotions, and quality of life and their implications for public health.

Abstract (150 Words)

This research re-conceptualizes Social Carrying Capacity (SCC) to more accurately consider the impact of crowding on residents as tourism development in a community increases. Recently, more researchers have been adapting SCC, which was initially adopted to tourism to study tourists, to study residents. However, these have largely been quantitative studies that assume crowding will have a similar impact on residents as it does on tourists or studies that are not critical of the traditional operationalization of SCC. Four focus groups were conducted across three sites with varying levels of tourism development to assess residents' perceptions of the impacts of tourism development. Constant comparison analysis found that residents experience crowding in many different ways and experiences other impacts beyond crowding as development levels change. This qualitative exploration can help validate and strengthen quantitative operationalizations.

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Re-conceptualizing the Social Carrying Capacity of Tourism Destinations to be More Inclusive to Residents of the Community

This research re-conceptualizes Social Carrying Capacity (SCC) to more accurately consider the impact of crowding on residents as tourism development in a community increases. Recently, more researchers have been adapting SCC, which was initially adopted to tourism to study tourists, to study residents. However, these have largely been quantitative studies that assume crowding will have a similar impact on residents as it does on tourists or studies that are not critical of the traditional operationalization of SCC. Four focus groups were conducted across three sites with varying levels of tourism development to assess residents' perceptions of the impacts of tourism development. Constant comparison analysis found that residents experience crowding in many different ways and experiences other impacts beyond crowding as development levels change. This qualitative exploration can help validate and strengthen quantitative operationalizations.