Measuring Sustainable Tourism Development in Remote Rural ...

Unfortunately, in remote areas, many, if not most, local public officials and community
leaders are part time and/or volunteers with limited experience or knowledge of
recently enacted economic development or growth management practices. The lack of
experience and time to become acquainted with such practices often means that
relatively little community development planning occurs (Walzer and Deller, 1996: 9-
10). This factor may lead to little planning and development, or just plain bad planning.
The peripheral location of many rural areas and their poor external communications
make them relatively unattractive to many employers and firms outside these areas
(Shaw, 1979). Local development efforts continue to help rural communities assess
tourism as a potential economic development strategy. The basic question should be
how to develop tourism appropriate to the needs of each locality or region (Bramwell et
al, 1996). How can local interests and needs be satisfied by the increase of increased
tourism in the community? Assessing the potential for tourism development in
peripheral areas is complicated. It is not simply a question of matching what the
tourists want with what communities can provide, but critically it depends in large
measure upon local acceptability. The complex social problems in rural areas make it
necessary for development to involve measures that improve, above all, the human
condition and the quality of life of its residents, guided by the principles of equity and
justice.
The core issue for understanding the community-tourism relationship centres on how
community members communicate and interact, how they are influenced in their
opinions and how this dynamic process of influence might be successfully managed for
sustainable tourism enterprises (Pearce et al, 1996: 228). The failure of local officials
and residents to comprehend both the positive and negative impacts of tourism to the
local economy and community severely inhibits progress (Long, 1991; McLauglin et al,
1991; and Murphy, 1985). As the number of visitors to a region increases, residents
who at first were overwhelmingly positive in their attitudes to their guests develop
increasing reservations concerning the long-term benefits of the visitors. This may be
because the original expectations of the benefits of tourism were unrealistic (and so are
incapable of being fulfilled) or because the benefits are perceived to accrue only to a
small number of people.
Alternatively, although expectations of the benefits are realised, the environmental or
social costs were initially overlooked, or excessively discounted, so that the local
residents come to doubt whether their visitors are an unqualified blessing (Akis,
Peristianis and Warner, 1996: 481). Pizam (1978) has attempted to determine
empirically the existence of negative impacts of tourism with the hypothesis that heavy
tourism concentration on a destination area leads to negative resident attitudes toward
tourists and tourism in general. His study seems to confirm the hypothesised
relationship between an individual’s economic dependency on tourism and one’s
overall attitude towards tourism. It was found that the more dependent a person was
on tourism as a means of livelihood, the more positive was that person’s overall
attitude toward tourism in the study area. People are continually assessing their
situation and surroundings. For effective community-based indicators we need to
translate the things people want to measure into a manageable form. The purpose of
measurement is to make values more precise, to compare and evaluate one thing
against another (Lee-Smith, 1997)