Tourism Impacts: Environmental, Social, and Economic

Posted on Mar 14, 2025 in Public Administration, Management, and Governance

Coastal Destinations

Ancient Forms of Tourism: Spa, thalassotherapy, thermae, and “taking the waters” were popularized by the Romans, who built luxurious thermae over hot springs, laying the foundation for spa towns.

  • From Romans to European aristocracy before World War I.
  • Transformation of fishers’ lifestyles.
  • Some negative impacts: overcrowding, pollution, overbuilding.
  • Increased residential settlement.
  • Need for recovery towards “green” practices.

Urban Destinations

Urban destinations offer a range of tourist products and services, creating diverse product packages. They attract shoppers and cultural visitors.

  • City destinations are often tourism gateways to their surrounding regions.
  • Locations associated with a major city destination may benefit from high volumes of visitors, drawing day trips from tourists based in the city.
  • The large quantity of heterogeneous products and services sold to visitors and locals makes each city a unique tourism product cluster.
  • A single authority cannot direct the development and marketing of these clusters. Residents, private and public stakeholders, and other authorities need to cooperate.
  • Visitors usually concentrate on certain locations, creating invisible boundaries that define tourist zones.
  • Tourism in urban areas is a year-round activity with limited seasonality, due to diversified demand and supply.
  • Should respect the living standards of residents.

Rural Destinations

Benefits include the rural way of life, physical activity (hill walking to adventure sports), tranquility, and landscape aesthetics.

  • Complementary Income for Farm Economies: Tourism can provide essential income in rural areas where farming alone is not sustainable.
  • Concern About Social Impact: Especially in small communities, regarding lifestyle changes.
  • Lack of Infrastructures: Weather conditions can limit the tourist season in higher latitudes.
  • Natural Resources Must Be Preserved: Scenic areas may be protected by zoning, creating buffer zones, and limiting tourist flows (e.g., national parks).
  • Difficulty Attracting Investors: Solutions include “flagship” projects, development corporations, or small business extension services.
  • Need for long-term public tourism policy support.

Environmental Impact

Negative Impacts:

  • Hunting and fishing impact wildlife.
  • Sand dunes can be damaged by overuse.
  • Vegetation can be destroyed by walkers.
  • Campfires may destroy forests.
  • Ancient monuments can suffer damage (e.g., graffiti).
  • Construction detracts from aesthetics.
  • Improper trash disposal harms wildlife and aesthetics.
  • Path erosion (e.g., Pyramids of Giza).
  • Noise and air pollution.

Positive Impacts:

  • Preservation of ancient monuments and historic buildings (e.g., Taj Mahal, Pyramids, Great Wall of China).
  • Creation of national parks and wildlife sanctuaries (e.g., Yellowstone).
  • Protection of reefs and beaches (e.g., Great Barrier Reef).
  • Maintenance of forests (e.g., New Forest).

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Process

  1. EIA examines:
    1. Environmental auditing procedures.
    2. Limitations to natural resource use.
    3. Environmental problems, conflicts, and project feasibility.
    4. Possible detrimental effects (people, flora, fauna, landscape, cultural heritage).
  2. Environmental damage prevention is easier and more cost-effective than correction.

Environmental Indicators

Climate change, ozone layer depletion, eutrophication, acidification, toxic contamination, urban environmental quality, biodiversity, cultural landscapes, waste, water resources, forest resources, soil degradation, material resources, and socio-economic indicators.

Sociocultural Impact

Allocentrics: Seek cultural and environmental differences, belong to higher income groups, are adventurous, and require little tourism infrastructure.

Psychocentrics: Seek familiar surroundings, belong to lower income groups, are unadventurous, and demand a higher level of tourism infrastructure.

Causes of Tourism Growth

World population growth, increasing urbanization and urban life pressure, communication and information technology development, mobility and accessibility evolution, increasing leisure time and holiday benefits, and increases in world trade for business tourism.

Factors Influencing Tourism

Age, education, income level, and socio-economic background.

Negative Sociocultural Impacts

  • Economic Factors: Economic imbalance between tourists and hosts.
  • Labor Factors: Job attraction, but often with poor working conditions.
  • Behavioral Factors: Friction in social behavior codes (e.g., dress code).
  • Resource Use Factors: Land price inflation and damage to heritage sites.
  • Specific Impacts:
    • Sexual exploitation.
    • Increased crime (robbery, drugs, violence).
    • Health issues (disease transmission).
    • Ethical concerns (slum tourism, dark tourism).

Positive Sociocultural Impacts

  • Tourism Fosters Local Pride: It can inspire pride in a destination’s heritage.
  • Tourism for Awareness and Peace: Broadens understanding of other cultures.
  • Tourism Provides Shared Infrastructure: Enhances local infrastructure.
  • Tourism Provides Direct Support: Funds to restore heritage sites.

Destination Challenges (The “14 C’s”)

COMPLEX, CONTR(Coordination), CHANGE, CRISIS, COMPLACENCY, CUSTOMERS, CULT(Culture), COMPET(Competition), COMMODIFICA(Commoditization), CREATI(Creativity), COMMUNIC(Communication), CHANNELS, CYBERSP(Cyberspace), CONSOLID(Consolidation), COLLABO(Collaboration).

Economic Impact (Tourism Satellite Account – TSA)

  1. Inbound tourism expenditure.
  2. Domestic tourism expenditure.
  3. Outbound tourism expenditure.
  4. Internal tourism final consumption.
  5. Production accounts of tourism industries.
  6. Domestic supply and internal consumption.
  7. Employment in tourism industries.
  8. Tourism gross fixed capital formation.
  9. Tourism collective consumption.
  10. Non-monetary indicators of tourism.

Types of Multipliers

  • Transaction (or Sales) Multiplier: Additional business revenue.
  • Output Multiplier: Additional output generated.
  • Income Multiplier: Additional income created.
  • Employment Multiplier: Total employment generated.
  • Government Revenue Multiplier: Impact on government revenue.

Sustainable Tourism and Capital Stocks

  1. Human Capital: Population, welfare, health, workforce, education.
  2. Physical Capital: Productive capital (machinery, buildings).
  3. Environmental Capital: Man-made and natural resources (biodiversity).
  4. Sociocultural Capital: Well-being, social cohesion, cultural heritage.

Local Factors Influencing Carrying Capacity

Social structure, cultural heritage, environment, economic structure, political structure, and resources.

Climate Change and Tourism

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.” (IPCC, 2007)

  • Tourism contributes to climate change (estimated 5% of total CO2 emissions).
  • The tourism sector has a relatively high capacity to adapt.
  • Tourism is a highly climate-sensitive economic sector.
  • Climate change risk management should be integrated into business practices.

Climate Change Impacts on Tourism

  1. Direct Climatic Impacts: Redistribution of climatic assets, changes in extreme weather events.
  2. Indirect Impacts from Environmental Change: Water availability, biodiversity loss, landscape degradation.
  3. Indirect Impacts from Societal Change: Risk to economic growth and political stability.
  4. Impacts from Mitigation Policies: Changes in travel behavior due to increased costs.