Do residents differentiate between the impacts of tourism, cruise tourism, and Airbnb tourism?

Abstract

Tourism impacts the quality of life of host community residents in myriad ways. Most research seeking to understand those impacts has either focused on tourism in general or a single specific type of tourism. Little is understood about how residents attribute perceived impacts to different forms of tourism when they are present in the same community. We surveyed 995 residents of the island of São Miguel in the Azores archipelago to examine perceptions of tourism’s quality of life impacts using Andereck and Nyaupane’s Tourism Quality of Life Impacts scale in relation to tourism in general, cruise tourism, and Airbnb tourism. While confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed poor fit of the measurement model across all forms of tourism, repeated measures ANOVA analysis of individual impact questions revealed that residents did differentiate between the impacts of various types of tourism in their community. Residents thought that tourism in general was the most detrimental to urban issues like traffic and crowding and that cruise tourism provided the least positive impacts to their community across all other TQOL variables. These findings indicate that future research on resident perceptions of tourism impacts should seek to measure impacts related to the specific forms of tourism.

Keywords:

• Tourism impacts
• resident attitudes
• cruise tourism
• Airbnb tourism
• Azores

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Evan J. Jordan

Evan J. Jordan, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Health and Wellness Design at the Indiana University School of Public Health – Bloomington. His research focuses on the impacts of tourism on the mental health of residents of host communities.

José Cabral Vieira

José António Cabral Vieira, Ph.D., is full professor in the School of Business and Economics at the University of the Azores, Portugal, and a research fellow of the Centre for Applied Economic Studies of the Atlantic (CEEAplA). His main research interests are Tourism Economics and Labor Economics.

Carlos M. Santos

Carlos Alberto Silva Melo Santos, Ph.D., is a full professor in the School of Business and Economics at the University of the Azores, Portugal, and a research fellow of the Centre for Applied Economic Studies of the Atlantic (CEEAplA). His main research interests are Tourism Economics and Regional Economics.

Ting-Yen (Tim) Huang

Ting-Yen (Tim) Huang, M.B.A. is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Health and Wellness Design at the Indiana University School of Public Health – Bloomington. His research interests include sustainable culinary tourism.