Exploring the effects of “excessive tourism growth” on public health and ecosystem

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to explore and understand the effects of excessive tourism growth on public health, local people and the ecosystem. The secondary purpose of the study is to link excessive tourism growth to social exchange theory, in terms of interchanging key resources of tourism destinations.Design/methodology/approachThis is an exploratory study where qualitative research methods are employed. Telephone interview technique is used to obtain data from academicians who work at various universities in Turkey. Content analysis and thematic analysis with an inductive approach are made by use of MAXQDA software program.FindingsFindings reveal that the satisfaction of local people is an important gain in terms of the economy, but the destruction of the ecosystem due to the excessive crowd, in a sense, overtourism, garbage and too much waste is striking disadvantage based on the responses. Risk of contagious disease, effects on the natural environment and wastes are stated to have huge impacts on the public health and ecosystem.Practical implicationsThe study identifies some implications in terms of imbalance and unfairness among the locals who face with excessive crowds. Managing the effects of excessive tourism growth on vulnerable destinations and local people, controlling the carrying capacity in destinations with anxiety, fear, depression, health problems and low living standards should be taken under consideration. Additionally, finding ways to get rid of infectious diseases (such as increasing health checkpoints at borders, investigating the carrying capacity of destinations) is important for tourism spots.Originality/valueAs a major theoretical contribution, this study links excessive tourism growth to social exchange theory and reveals that the degree of exchanging valuable resources in the destination and the level of interaction between locals and tourists are the most critical points for the well-being of the local community and ecosystem.

Unpacking overtourism as a discursive formation through interdiscursivity

“…While destination inhabitants and tourists undoubtedly suffer if tourism makes destinations dysfunctional, discourse made in the name of imagined majorities such as a monolith of homogenised destination residents, cannot offer novel solutions to deep seated economic, environmental and spatial inequalities. Rather than identify tourism as something normative or something to live with, the subjective appeal of the discourse encourages a narrative of emergency and provides space for a retreat into identitarianism, where tourists are exceptional and dangerous to the "normal lives" of residents (Sari and Nazli, 2020). Once rhetoric and metaphors are embedded, they are hard to undo.…”

Entre sentido de pertenencia y potencial de desarrollo: la percepción del turismo en los residentes de Zaruma

“…Sin embargo, muchos residentes pueden percibir el riesgo que una actividad turística con un comportamiento irresponsable de los visitantes puede resultar en una alteración del estado del medio ambiente y el consecuente deterioro de los recursos naturales. Además, a parte de los comportamientos personales, el turismo implica un aumento de la presión humana en un lugar específico, que no siempre es bien tolerada por parte del ecosistema (Sari & Nazli, 2020). Sin embargo, es posible pensar que los recursos naturales resultan ser identificados como atracciones únicas, y, por ende, motiven a crear infraestructura que permitan recibir a los turistas.…”

Overtourism and the Local Community Well-Being

“…However, due to the prevalent framework of measuring tourism's success, which is based solely on economic parameters, positive changes tourism brings, remain under the radar. Simultaneously, in the era of overtourism (Ali 2016;Koens et al 2018), tourism has at numerous destinations become excessive (Capocchi et al 2019;Sari and Nazli 2020) and failed destination communities -a manifestation of unsustainable tourism (Mihalic 2020). With the global rise of sustainable tourism sentiment (UNWTO 2020a) as a new perspective, the reality of tourism performance changes significantly.…”

“…So far, extensive research has been conducted on various aspects of overtourism, including its impacts on destination residents (Cheer et al 2020;Cheung and Li 2019;Goodwin 2017;Milano 2017;Milano et al 2019a;Muler Gonzalez et al 2018;Perkumienė and Pranskūnienė 2019;Sari and Nazli 2020), nature-based and protected area tourism (Chung et al 2018;Hockings et al 2020;Leung et al 2018;Mandić 2019;Spenceley et al 2017) in overtourism context (Koščak et al 2020). Also, there is a rich base of research on local communities in tourism (Fiorello and Bo 2012;Lopes et al 2015) as well as on human and community well-being (Cloutier Cloutier et al 2019;Sarkki 2017), its connection to nature (Azara et al 2018;Naidoo et al 2019;Sandifer et al 2015) and tourism (Dwyer 2020;Musikanski et al 2019).…”