The Impact Of Tourism Development On Residents' Perceptions Of Community Life

Abstract

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.