Silvia Iodice (p), Riccardo Curtale, Filipe Batista e Silva

Daniele Crotti

The development of tourism brings obvious socioeconomic benefits but also challenges when the flow of tourists creates competition with residents on the use of space, housing, and services. The social sustainability of tourism has been gaining momentum in public and policy fora but is sometimes lacking sound evidence and appropriate nuance. Therefore, monitoring and understanding residents’ perceptions towards tourism and their causes is a fundamental aspect to enable sustainable tourism management that reconciles tourism development with communities’ well-being. This presentation will outline the concept and first steps of a novel study to assess residents’ perception of tourism in Europe. In a first stage, we will map existing European attempts to assess tourism perception by locals at different spatial granularities, towards a comparative analysis of recent initiatives. In a second stage, some descriptive statistics will be built, benefitting from multi-country survey results, leading to the identification of common patterns as well as main differences across European countries. Furthermore, this phase will allow the identification of possible gaps in current survey approaches at the national and regional levels, ultimately leading to the formulation of guidelines on how to address them through the integration of relevant aspects to consider in future efforts. The last step of the study will concern the association of the survey results with significant tourism indicators to detect if and to what extent the way residents perceive tourist aspects goes hand in hand with relevant features. The overall aim of this study is to pave the way towards a future harmonised assessment of tourism perception across EU countries and regions to assess the key factors driving residents’ feelings, thereby orienting policy design in favour of balanced tourism development.

Rebecca Daul (p), Nina Niederhametner

Silvia Iodice

The measurement of the tourism acceptance by Statistics Austria represents a significant step forward in recording the social dimension of tourism in Austria. Building on the amendment of the Tourism Demand and Acceptance Statistics Ordinance 2024, the new survey aims to capture the perceptions and attitudes of the Austrian resident population towards tourism. The data on the perceived impact and importance, the perceived volume and the financial dependence of people on tourism closes a key gap in existing tourism statistics, which have so far primarily considered economic indicators.
The paper and presentation focus on methodological principles such as the survey procedure, sampling and the design of the questionnaire, which were optimised in advance by means of a comprehensive pre-test. The survey is carried out as a supplementary survey to the travel behaviour survey conducted on the basis of Regulation (EU) No. 692/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council and is based on a proportionally stratified random sample of the Austrian resident population aged 15 and over. Around 3 000 computer-assisted web interviews are carried out each quarter, resulting in an annual net sample of 12 000 people. The results are weighted, extrapolated and converted into descriptive statistics and the tourism acceptance score. In addition, innovative approaches such as a small area estimation model are used, which enables detailed estimates to be made at municipal level.
The results of this survey not only provide transparent insights into the social impact of tourism, but also form the basis for evidence-based measures and strategies for sustainable tourism development. Austria is thus setting an international example for the integration of social sustainability aspects into tourism statistics.

Sabrina Seeler (p), Bernd Eisenstein

Rebecca Daul

Strategies to maximise growth and tourists' insatiable demand for leisure experiences contributed to a sustained increase in international tourist arrivals prior to COVID-19 and a quick rebound once pandemic restrictions were lifted. This proves the tourism industry’s resilience and while economic benefits have been reaped, social and environmental sustainability has been threatened in some destinations. Increasing imbalances between local communities and guests have led to tensions and the emergence of anti-tourism attitudes and movements. These ultimately jeopardise destination competitiveness and threaten their sustainable development. With the realisation that the well-being of the host community and residents’ tourism acceptance are critical to the success of a tourism destination, interest in residents' perceptions and sentiments has grown. This interest has further been stimulated through ongoing overtourism discussions in academia as well as popular media. Despite the growing interest, empirical evidence remained scarce and there was limited research on comparative tools to monitor tourism acceptance over time. This research addressed these knowledge gaps and used a quantitative research approach to assess how Germans perceive the impact of tourism in their place of residence. In this context, a standardised measurement scale, the so-called Tourism Acceptance Score, was developed and two dimensions were proposed to monitor tourism acceptance over time. Since its introduction in 2019, the scale has been tested, methodologically refined, further developed and validated in more than 100 German destinations. The results show that there is no nationwide problem of tourism acceptance, but localised and temporal overtourism issues that require further attention in the future. The study also shows that Germans understand tourism as a driver of economic well-being, but not as a driver of personal quality of life. The need not only to measure the feelings of local residents, but also to ensure that tourism development is in harmony with the local community, can be further underlined by time comparisons in this study. This shows that tourism acceptance is declining significantly and that destination-specific strategies are needed to mitigate the (perceived) negative impacts and enhance tourism acceptance. The newly developed and validated Tourism Acceptance Score helps to fill existing research and practice gaps, provides important insights and thus makes a theoretical, methodological and practical contribution to tourism science and beyond.

Daniele Crotti (p), Jurgena Myftiu

Sabrina Seeler

In the tourism domain, the interplay between visitors and residents growingly interacts with the social and natural environment. In line with the social exchange theory, residents might support local tourism development according to their positive or negative reported perceptions. Driven by institutional pillars, although transportation systems have rapidly become key actors for tourism development, rather scarce attention has been devoted to the role of tourist marketplaces in the understanding of sustainability and transport-related issues at a local level. In this paper we study the extent at what transportation features related to a tourist marketplace might affect the residents’ perception about the social, economic and environmental sustainability of the shopping space. Considering the Mercato di Luino, a historical tourist marketplace created in 1543 in the province of Varese (Italy) as a case study, we collected primary data about residents’ perception on the sustainability of the tourist marketplace and, after checking the validity of used Likert-scale items, we followed a latent class analysis approach, and we contrasted two models. In the first model, only socio-demographics are considered as predictors of classes, while in the second model also transport-based characteristics were added. In both cases, we identified three latent groups of MdL users having in common unobserved views on sustainability issues. If the segmentation is conducted without including transportation issues, we found that the analysis might likely overestimate the share of citizens perceiving the studied marketplace as a highly sustainable tourist marketplace. Instead, if residents’ transport-related choices and their view about mobility issues linked to the marketplace are added, the share of residents with positive evaluation of the marketplace is substantially reduced, and the latent groups of residents displays a segmentation for which citizens’ support might be harmed in case of lacking transport policies to smoothen the hindrances of tourist flows. As a result, residents’ opinions about transport issues are found to have a key impact on their perception of sustainability. Focusing on tourist marketplaces as traditional places where residents directly interact with tourists and provide them with cultural experiences and products by local manufacturers or farms, this research encompasses residents as being primary stakeholders in tourism planning and development. In the presence of negative perception of marketplace sustainability due to transport externalities, therefore, this study enables policymakers to consider the important role of mobility and act to develop policies to reduce residents’ concerns about sustainability.