Events and Tourism Development within a Local Community: The Case of Winchester (UK)

Paul Spencer,Hugues Séraphin,Marco Platania,Giuseppe Modica

doi:10.3390/su10103728

Paul Spencer, Hugues Séraphin

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su10103728

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Abstract

Tourism as an industry has many kinds of impacts on destinations and their communities. The presence of tourism could create the conditions for an economic development but in the same way produce negative effect (crowding out) and externalities (the Janus-face character). Between the different actors inside the tourist destination, there are the local community which could endure the pressure of tourism. In some cases, this pressure reduces the wellbeing of the residents. The present research paper focuses on how activities like events and tourism impact on community well-being. Winchester (England), a Special Interest Tourism and Event (SITE), is used as a case study. The data are collected using an on-line interview and they are elaborated using multivariate techniques and ordinal regression analysis. The results of the study reveal a close relation between the level of happiness of the local residents and their perception of the tourism industry and event development. Local residents in Winchester are perceiving the tourism industry and events rather positively as they believe it supports their culture and the local economy and job in particular. Our first overall conclusion is that there is a relationship between the residents’ happiness and tourism/event perception. Moreover, our findings support what claimed by several scholars that tourism specialisation improves the residents quality of life (QOL). The present study has not shown the direction of the influence but according to previous research it is the level of happiness of the local residents that determines their perception of the tourism industry and event development and not the other way around. The second finding of the study reveals that SITE destinations have a high potential in terms of contributing to the local residents’ happiness and subsequently visitors. Our third and final conclusion is that, when the benefits of tourism and events are higher than the cost, local residents and are likely to be supportive of the activity.

Highlights

It is common knowledge that tourism as an industry has positive and negative impacts on destinations and their communities [1,2]
In order to delimit the scope of the investigation, we provide an analysis of tourism management articles referring to happiness and well-being
The positive perception of tourism and events in Winchester is due to the profile of the local residents

Summary

Introduction

It is common knowledge that tourism as an industry has positive and negative impacts on destinations and their communities [1,2]. This can be explained by the Janus-face character of the industry [3,4]. Among the negative impacts of the industry, we can point out over-tourism. Over the summer 2017, this became a major issue, across Europe. Many anti-tourism movements arose because of over-tourism, as well as suggestions to cope with this issue [5,6]. We are going to focus on the latter key point

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