Linking Culture and the Environment

D. Ioannides 61
Acknowledging the need for more longitudinal studies, Chang and Vogt
(2008) recently used cohort analysis to investigate changes in residents’ perceptions
towards tourism in an Alaskan island community. They focused on
the period 1995–2001, a time when the community was witnessing restructuring
from a fishing-based economy to tourism. The authors noted that the
residents’ attitudes concerning tourism’s economic impacts do indeed change
through time. Older people appear less accepting towards tourism than
youths, perhaps because the former group had been used to fishing as the
mainstay of the community and could not see how a visitor-based economy,
which pays far less, would take its place. Young people by contrast, see tourism
as the only realistic opportunity for the community’s future. The investigation
also notes differences in attitudes based on income, gender and length
of residency.
Martin’s (2006) study in Hilton Head, South Carolina, provides a rare
glimpse of the use of TALC for investigations of changing attitudes. In this case,
Martin demonstrates the role of politics in a destination’s evolution. She argues
that local governments are often in an awkward contradictory position since
on one hand they must protect the public who may oppose a controversial tourism
development while, on the other hand, they need to support economic
growth through tourism, given the sector’s job-creation potential. She provides
evidence of opposing viewpoints towards land-use regulations, with some
long-term residents expressing worries that restrictions will diminish their
ability to develop their land as they see fit. Arguing that ‘resident attitudes are
an important determinant in assessing whether social carrying capacity is
being exceeded in a manner that will affect the social carrying capacity of the
community’, Martin (2006, p. 240) investigated whether or not perspectives
concerning the future of tourism development differ from group to group and
whether certain groups’ opinions are powerful enough to shape an anti- tourism
governmental policy. Among the most powerful pro-tourism growth advocates,
she argues, would be landowners, financial institutions and other players who
benefit economically from tourism, while she hypothesizes that local inhabitants
with no direct economic interest in tourism plus recent immigrants who moved
into the community because of the quality of life it offers, may increasingly
resent the sector as the destination evolves.
Surprisingly, her findings demonstrate that at least in Hilton Head,
although business leaders are more welcoming overall towards tourism
compared to government officials and retirees, differences of opinion between
the various groups are far from drastic; rather, they reflect variations in the
degree of acceptance. Thus, although local residents including retirees who
do not derive a clear economic advantage from tourism are concerned about
the future growth of the sector, they certainly are not anti-growth. Instead,
these groups just like the business leaders desire future development,
although they emphasize this development has to be well planned and
quality-oriented. Martin explains the lack of full-blown opposition towards
tourism in this particular destination by the fact that Hilton Head was a
planned resort from the outset and its residents have always enjoyed a high
quality of life. These people are well off and for the most part highly educated