Tourism impact and community perception: An equity-social representational perspective

Abstract

The reactions of host communities to the tourism industry have usually been explained with stage or step models. Additionally, much current research provides purely descriptive information and presents data on community attitudes to tourism in terms of a demographic segmentation approach. A new perspective is offered here which may be termed an equity-social representational account of community attitudes to tourism. This approach argues that community attitudes to tourism usually follow an equity function, but that certain tourism developments or events trigger widely held social representations of tourism which can modify the responses one might expect from only considering equity based factors. Data from a sample of 507 Cairns residents were used to support the equity-social representation model of community attitudes to tourism. Community groups selected on the basis of their equity scores (perceived costs and benefits from tourism) were shown to differ in their perception of the value of tourism to the community. Additionally, it was demonstrated that the nature of tourism development proposals, which were designed to evoke different social representations, subtly influenced the responses of the equity based groups in different ways.