Entrepreneur-led Landscape Changes During the Amenity Transition

Abstract

Rural tourism is often regarded as a catalyst to stimulate economic growth in amenity rich but underdeveloped regions. Much research to date has focused on developing a robust rural tourism industry separate from the social-spatial evolution of the exurban community. Tourism entrepreneurs extend the market mechanisms to the traditionally nonmonetary environmental and social contexts of the rural community by commodifying the physical landscape and the social heritages. Moreover, an increasingly commodified rural landscape can co-produce both the tourism industry and the rural community simultaneously. Therefore, using Hocking Hills, Ohio, as an example to analyze tourism entrepreneurs’ business strategies and corresponding ways of capitalizing on environmental resources, this research connects the long-standing paradigms of tourism development and community evolution and forges a new direction for interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical studies.