William P. Stewart

A structural equation model of residents’ attitudes for tourism development

Abstract This study tests the structural equation model between residents’ perceived tourism impacts and attitudes toward host community. The model consisted of five latent constructs and nine path hypotheses and is based upon 732 mailback questionnaires returned by residents of Cheju Island, Korea, a major domestic tourism destination. It was found that residents’ ‘community satisfaction’ was closely related to ‘perceived positive’ and ‘perceived negative’ tourism impacts. These constructs were directly causing ‘attitudes toward additional tourism development’. But the hypothesized path relationships between ‘personal benefits from tourism development’ and the constructs of ‘perceived negative tourism impacts’ and ‘overall community satisfaction’ were rejected. In conclusion, community satisfaction was influenced by perception of tourism impacts, and may be useful in planning for additional tourism development.

Ecotourism and commodification: protecting people and places

The ability of ecotourism to protect both people and places is an unresolved, and growing, concern. Commodification of host culture and environment is a widely reported social impact of tourism and spawns an array of implications regarding indigenous peoples view of their places and themselves. The degree of impact from ecotourism development is related to the degree of market development within the indigenous community and their state of decline regarding natural resource scarcity. Pre-existing power differentials between local people and other groups may be exacerbated by ecotourism development. To protect both people and their places, native peoples claim to control should be legitimized by conservation and government authorities, particularly indigenous peoples role in technical management of the protected area. Regional and national government controls are relevant at the inception of ecotourism development, but ultimately should be reduced to one of infrastructure planning and coordination.

Experience Patterns: Capturing the Dynamic Nature of a Recreation Experience

A recreation experience is not static, it varies over the course of an engagement. Yet, most recreation research operationalizes recreation benefits and outcomes as essentially static in nature (i....

Number of Encounters and Experience Quality in Grand Canyon Backcountry: Consistently Negative and Weak Relationships

The relationship between encounters and the overall quality of recreation experience is one of the most common research topics in outdoor recreation. Yet after more than three decades of study, there remain divergent opinions about both the nature of this relationship and its implications for use limits. Evidence for a strong influence of encounters on experience quality is weak but it is unclear whether this means the relationship itself is weak or that the methods used to isolate the relationship have been inadequate. This paper explores relationships between number of encounters, crowding, solitude/privacy achieved, and overall experience quality for 185 backcountry visitors to Grand Canyon National Park. In contrast to most past research, we employed a diarylike method to control for variation in person-based effects (e.g., differences in expectations and motivations between individuals) and we used a multi-item scale to capture more variation in total experience quality. Our results indicate that there is a consistently negative but weak relationship between number of encounters and experience quality. In other words, most backpackers were negatively affected by encountering more groups, but the resultant effect was small. This implies that managers should be reluctant to justify use restrictions on the basis of higher quality experiences and that user-based empirical research is of limited utility in grappling with such restrictions. Echoing the 35-year-old suggestions of Wagar, the original student of recreational carrying capacity, a careful understanding of the regional supply and demand for different types of recreation experiences, including low density experiences, are more likely to provide the basis for wise decisions about use limits.

Satisfaction of what? Post hoc versus real‐time construct validity

Abstract Post hoc satisfaction (PHS) and real‐time satisfaction (RTS) are alternative ways to operationalize recreation satisfaction. PHS is an appraisal of a recrea‐tionists current image of the recreation experience assessed after the on‐site activity has occurred. RTS is an appraisal of a recreationists current state. The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between these two constructs and their empirical operations. Satisfaction was assessed at 12 times during a day hike (RTS), on‐site immediately after the hike (PHS‐0), at home 3 months after the hike (PHS‐3), and at home 9 months after the hike (PHS‐9). Results indicate that PHS‐0 and the summary indicators of the RTS assessments were significantly related (R2 = .31, p < .01). The relation between PHS‐3 and RTS exhibited a reduced fit (R2 = .18, p < .01) and a still weaker fit between PHS‐9 and RTS (R2 = .04, p < .10). In addition, PHS‐0 was significantly greater than both PHS‐3 and PHS‐9. The analysis and discussion suggest that dif...

Investigating the Influence of Welcome Center Information on Travel Behavior

Welcome centers have long been recognized as an important part of the tourism promotional mix. However, little is known about the degree to which information provided at welcome centers actually influences visitor behavior. This study examined this issue and found that information provided at welcome centers influences travel behavior but the extent of impact depends largely upon the nature of the trip to the area. A number of managerial implications are discussed based upon the results of the study.

Evidence of Cumulative Attraction in Multidestination Recreational Trip Decisions

Most destination demand models in the tourism and outdoor recreation literature are predicated on the assumption that when travelers leave home, they go to a single destina tion. This assumption is often fallacious, since many pleasure trips involve visits to mul tiple destinations. This study provides evidence of multiple destinations offering cumula tive attractions within a single trip. Multidestination travel is conceptualized as a constrained choice process in which individuals evaluate travel alternatives as bundles of attributes. Using a multistage sampling technique, each subject was given a unique set of six treat ment scenarios composed of three pairs of multidestination trips and asked to rate the likeli hood of going on each trip. Three destination attributes, each with two different levels, were used to characterize the destinations: tourism services and facilities, settings for relax ation and sport, and distance between the primary and secondary destinations. Conjoint analysis techniques indicated that preference for a destination was enhanced by inclusion of a combination of destinations.

The Landscape Encountered and Experienced While Hiking

An operational definition is developed for the landscape encountered and experienced while hiking a natural area. Participant photography and experience sampling methods were combined and modified to enable sampling and exploration of this landscape. At various times during a hike, people were interrupted and instructed to photograph what they were looking at, to rate the scenic beauty of the view in question, and to report their current satisfactions and moods. Views were categorized by the type of object that was the focus of attention (trail, vegetation, water, ephemeral, people, terrain) and by the distance of the object from the viewer. Results suggest that attention was focused most frequently on objects near the trail, within 15 meters; neither scenic nor ugly views attracted undue attention; ephemeral features were often the focus of attention and rated as scenic; the quality of the hiking experience (as represented by mood and satisfaction) was partially explained by the landscape views encountered; and more similarities than differences were found in what people viewed while hiking.

Community Behavior and Sustainable Rural Tourism Development

Community-based action as a positive impact of tourism development is examined and connected to a community’s capacity to protect itself from outside threats by negotiating the quality of tourism development. Five communities in Jeju Island, South Korea, are studied through interviews with community members and analysis of a regional newspaper archive. Tourism development is depicted as an interaction between outside developers and local residents that ultimately builds a sustainable dialogue for growth of tourism. In five communities, the partnerships established between local community residents and outside tourism developers began with initial resistance from residents and led to the following sequence of behavior: town meetings, formal organization of residents, petitioning, public demonstration, and legal action. By examining collective action narratives in the five study communities, a framework for sustainable rural tourism development is built to understand relationships between tourism impacts and community identity.

Leisure research for social justice: a response to Henderson.

Leisure research based on critical theories is an effective path to social justice for groups and communities that are marginalized or oppressed by those in power. In response to Henderson (2011), who frames our work as postpositivist, we argue critical theories are a more appropriate research paradigm to reflect our philosophical positions. Our inquiry into leisure is informed by an emancipatory vision for social change that aims to enact social justice. In this response, we detail our rationale for embracing critical theories as an effective research-based approach to affect social justice. We conclude by suggesting that paradigm proliferation enables researchers to enhance social justice within their communities of concern.