Health, Wellness and Tourism: healthy tourists, healthy business ...

Veenhoven (2005:61) “quality-of-life can be measured by how long and happy people live”.
These definitions provide the crucial dimensions to consider in this study.
On quality of life studies some authors have a general approach to the concept (Cumminis
1996; Diener and Suh 1997; Jurowski 2004) others, like Veenhoven (2005), highlight more
specifically the construct of Happiness, yet others, like Andrew and Withey (1976) focus on
Life Satisfaction. Happiness and Life Satisfaction are two constructs from Quality of life that
will be studied in this research to define the residents’ perceived quality of life. As Sirgy
(2001) points out these constructs, related to Quality of Life, should not be used
indiscriminately. As such, Happiness entails an emotional nature and Life Satisfaction a
cognitive one. The author refers that Life Satisfaction involves self- evaluation of one’s life or
accomplishments against some standard while Veenhoven (2005) defines Happiness as the
degree in which an individual judges the overall quality of life favourably. In other words,
subjective well-being is how well the person likes the life he or she leads.
Methodology
Until now a literature review and an exploratory study based on interviews and participant
observation have been carried out 55 . Since the researcher lives in the study area, it was
possible to use the techniques of participant observation and of informal interviews with
residents. These interviews were not recorded, as the residents do not deal well with the
situation. Only field notes were taken. It was asked to residents, for example, how they felt
about tourism and how they face tourism in their own space, how they accept tourists with
different nationalities and how they perceive the touristic activity impact on their residence
area and on their own quality of life. Very important topics in these interviews were the ones
distinguishing well-being, happiness and life satisfaction and their contribution to the overall
quality of life.
Semi-structured interviews to community leaders parishes’ presidents and local companies
were carried out in order to collect more detailed information and opinions about the parishes
under study and about tourism in the area. This work is still being done so that all leaders and
organizations representing the parishes are interviewed.
A detailed questionnaire design will be made, based on literature review and on this
exploratory study. The aim is to apply a structured questionnaire to a sample of residents in
the municipality of Loulé. Like in many other studies a five-point Likert scale will be used.
Residents will therefore be asked to rate the level of importance and/or satisfaction related to
given factors.
Discussion and conclusions
The exploratory study conducted so far reveals that residents’ tourism impact perceptions and
attitudes towards tourism are, in general, very positive in the municipality of Loulé. Residents
perceive tourism as a positive way to develop their residence area which, in many cases, faces
economic and social problems mainly due to the lack of employment opportunities. This
occurs primarily in rural areas of the municipality where tourism is not present or is in its
early stage of development. The residents’ support of tourism development seems higher as
residents don’t perceive negatively the tourism impact in the residence area. On the contrary
they tend to valorise the economic and social benefits of tourism. There are some indicators
that may reveal an increasing attention by the residents, to environmental factors.
55 This study is part of a PhD research in “Residents’ Perceptions of tourism impacts in their own quality of life”.