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Thepurpose of this study was to determine whether residents' perceptions of community life satisfaction vary with the levels of tourism development in theircommunity. Thestudy was conducted in 20 rural communities as part of the 1985 Colorado Rural Recreation Development Project administered by the University of Colorado-Boulder. A comprehen sive questionnaire investigating residents'perceptions of the importance of and their satis faction with seven dimensions of community life was distributed to one adult member of randomly selected households in each community. The seven dimensions ofcommunity life were public services, economics, environment, medical services, citizen involvement, for mal education, and recreation services. In order to determine which dimensions were most sensitive to changes in the level of tourism development, canonical analysis was conducted using tourism development ratings and community population as the set of independent variables and the seven importance and seven satisfaction ratings as the set ofdependent variables. Two significant canonical variates (p<.001) were found revealing that the relationship between tourism development and satisfaction or importance of community dimensions is generally nonlinear with citizen involvement, public services, and the environment being most sensitive to tourism development.

Focusing on the residents of 28 rural Colorado communities, this research examines differences in resident tourism perceptions and attitudes across communities categorized on the basis of the community's existing level of tourism. The results indicate that the perceived impacts of tourism, both positive and negative, increase with increasing levels of tourism. With respect to resident attitudes toward additional tourism development, however, the results suggest that resident attitudes initially increase in favorability with increasing tourism development, but achieve a threshold level of development beyond which attitudes become less favorable. In this study, this threshold was achieved when approximately 30% ofthe community's retail sales were derivedfrom tourism. Finally, the results also indicate that resident supportfor special tourism user fees and taxes increases with increasing levels of tourism development.

This study investigates residents' attitudes toward recreation and tourism development in 10 rural Colorado towns. Two-per capita ratios based on tourism retail sales and total retail sales were developed and the communities were grouped into high and low tourism and high and low economic categories. These two ratios as grouping variables and length of residence as a covariate formed the basis for 2 x 2 ANCOVA conducted to determine any significant differences for eight recreation attitudes and 18 tourism development attitude statements. Generally, it was found that residents' attitudes towards tourism development in communities with both high economic and tourism development and low economic and tourism development were more positive than those residents of the low/high or high/low economic and tourism development communities. Further, recreation attitudes were affected by level of economic activity but not level of tourism development. Additionally, length of residence was found to have no significant effect on the residents' attitudes towards tourism development.