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Sustainable Tourism: The Impacts of Tourism Development on Destination Communities

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Tourism, Culture, and Heritage".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (9 June 2025) | Viewed by 7048

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Rosen College of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
Interests: tourism impacts; destination management; customer experience

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Tourism serves as a significant driver of economic growth, providing substantial revenues, employment opportunities, and investments to local destination communities. However, unplanned levels of tourism activity often lead to negative social, cultural, environmental, and psychological outcomes for destination communities, adversely affecting residents’ quality of life, health, and well-being. Current approaches to evaluating the impacts of tourism often overlook these negative consequences and rely solely on metrics associated with tourist volumes, revenues, and taxes. Therefore, there is a pressing need for a more holistic and comprehensive framework that assesses tourism’s impacts on resident communities across the social, economic, health, environmental, and psychological dimensions.

This Special Issue aims to contribute to current knowledge by conceptualizing, operationalizing, and analyzing the impacts of tourism, thereby shifting the focus of destination research and practice from merely increasing visitation numbers to enhancing the overall impacts of tourism on destination communities. Therefore, the Special Issue invites papers that explore the effects of tourism on destination communities, including residents’ quality of life, health, well-being, perceptions of the impacts of tourism, support for tourism development, etc., as well as their influence on tourism policy-making, planning, and destination governance. Research from different disciplines, perspectives, and methodologies is highly encouraged.

Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Social impacts of tourism;
  • Cultural impacts of tourism;
  • Environmental impacts of tourism;
  • Economic impacts of tourism;
  • Psychological impacts of tourism;
  • Measuring the impacts of tourism;
  • Residents’ quality of life, health, and well-being;
  • Tourism development and destination communities;
  • Destination community stakeholders;
  • Residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts;
  • Residents’ support for tourism development;
  • Sustainable tourism policy.

Dr. Maksim Godovykh
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • tourism
  • tourism impacts
  • sustainable tourism
  • destination management

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

30 pages, 7770 KiB  
Article
Tourism Carrying Capacity in Coastal Destinations: An Assessment in Mazatlán, Mexico
by Pedro Alfonso Aguilar Calderón, Beatriz Adriana López-Chávez, Nadia Ilenia Peinado Osuna, Edgar Omar Burgueño Sánchez, José Alfonso Aguilar-Calderón and Jesús Alberto Somoza Ríos
Sustainability 2025, 17(14), 6344; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17146344 - 10 Jul 2025
Viewed by 520
Abstract
Tourism management in coastal destinations is vital to guide activity towards sustainable practices that ensure lower social and environmental impacts with greater benefits for the local community and experiences for tourists, especially in mature destinations where the main product is the beach. The [...] Read more.
Tourism management in coastal destinations is vital to guide activity towards sustainable practices that ensure lower social and environmental impacts with greater benefits for the local community and experiences for tourists, especially in mature destinations where the main product is the beach. The aim of this research is to calculate the Tourist Carrying Capacity (TCC) of a stretch of beach in Mazatlán, Mexico, under past, present, and future scenarios, under different intensities of use. The main findings indicate that by 2025 the Effective Carrying Capacity (ECC) is 19,644, 29,822, and 4911 users with intensive, medium, and low occupancy levels, respectively. A decrease of −30.63% was found between the Effective Carrying Capacity of the 2025 scenario with respect to 2005 and a decrease of −68.90% is predicted for the year 2050 with respect to the current one, indicating an accelerated trend in the decrease of physical space and, therefore, greater pressure on the coastal ecosystem in case the trend of tourists goes upward, without being sustainably managed. These results are useful for agencies involved in beach and tourism management in mature coastal destinations. Full article
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12 pages, 354 KiB  
Article
Exploring the Impacts of Tourism on the Well-Being of Local Communities
by Maksim Godovykh, Alan Fyall and Abraham Pizam
Sustainability 2025, 17(13), 5849; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17135849 - 25 Jun 2025
Viewed by 532
Abstract
Tourism can influence residents’ well-being in both positive and negative ways. Therefore, it is important to understand the nature of these effects and propose directions for future research from the residents’ perspective of positive tourism. This paper introduces a conceptual framework and proposes [...] Read more.
Tourism can influence residents’ well-being in both positive and negative ways. Therefore, it is important to understand the nature of these effects and propose directions for future research from the residents’ perspective of positive tourism. This paper introduces a conceptual framework and proposes theoretical foundations and methods for exploring the impacts of tourism on residents’ well-being. It also aims to contribute to the development of tourism practices that promote well-being for all stakeholders, with a clear emphasis on resident well-being, ensuring that tourism benefits are shared between visitors and the communities they visit. Full article
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27 pages, 469 KiB  
Article
Research on Influencing Factors of Tourism Support Behavior of Residents in Health and Wellness Tourism Destination: The Moderating Role of Active Health
by Lingyan Li, Dong Wang and Qian Li
Sustainability 2025, 17(10), 4507; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17104507 - 15 May 2025
Viewed by 530
Abstract
At this stage, there is a relative lack of research on the tourism support behavior impacts of residents in health and wellness tourism. This study examines the effects of residents’ perceived tourism impacts and perceived justice on tourism support behaviors and explores the [...] Read more.
At this stage, there is a relative lack of research on the tourism support behavior impacts of residents in health and wellness tourism. This study examines the effects of residents’ perceived tourism impacts and perceived justice on tourism support behaviors and explores the mediating role of affect and the moderating role of active health. Using the “cognitive-affective-behavioral” theory as a framework, this study conducted structural equation modeling on a sample of 500 residents in the BDH Life and Health Industry Innovation Demonstration Zone. It was found that the relationship between residents’ perceived benefits, distributional justice and procedural justice, and tourism support behaviors was positive, while the relationship between perceived costs and tourism support behaviors was negative; that positive affect played a mediating role between residents’ cognitive dimensions and tourism support behavior; and that active health played a moderating role between residents’ cognitive dimensions and tourism support behaviors. This study further enriches the theoretical research related to health and wellness tourism by exploring the role mechanism between the cognition and behavior of residents in health and wellness tourism destinations. It provides a theoretical basis for the comprehensive development of health and wellness tourism and the sustainable development of tourism destinations. Full article
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23 pages, 72027 KiB  
Article
Spatiotemporal Evolution and Driving Forces of Tourism Economic Resilience in Chinese Provinces
by Yingyue Sun, Wanying Lin, Mingyue Sun and Peng Chen
Sustainability 2024, 16(18), 8091; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16188091 - 16 Sep 2024
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1831
Abstract
This study focuses on the resilience of tourism economies in Chinese provinces, exploring their spatiotemporal evolution and driving forces as a crucial prerequisite for promoting the high-quality development of China’s tourism industry. We construct a resilience evaluation index system from four dimensions: resistance [...] Read more.
This study focuses on the resilience of tourism economies in Chinese provinces, exploring their spatiotemporal evolution and driving forces as a crucial prerequisite for promoting the high-quality development of China’s tourism industry. We construct a resilience evaluation index system from four dimensions: resistance resilience, recovery resilience, reshaping resilience, and development resilience, using provincial tourism data from 2012 to 2022. The study employs Moran’s Index, kernel density estimation, and GIS technology to investigate the differentiation characteristics, spatial evolution processes, and spatial agglomeration characteristics of provincial tourism economic resilience in China. Finally, the GeoDetector model is used to analyze the driving factors. The findings are as follows: (1) Over time, most provinces and cities in China have shown varying degrees of improvement in tourism economic resilience, with different changes observed across the four dimensions. (2) Spatially, significant differences exist between provinces, with better resilience in the east than in the west and in the south than in the north. (3) Regionally, while no polarization is observed, there is a distinct differentiation between high and low-value areas. (4) Regional linkages indicate the presence of interregional associations in China’s tourism economic resilience, with non-uniform distribution of cold and hot spots. (5) Key driving factors include per capita railway mileage, domestic tourism revenue, the number of travel agencies, and the number of employees in accommodation and catering. Under the backdrop of rapid tourism economic development, improving infrastructure construction and enhancing the comprehensive strength of the tourism industry is vital for boosting tourism economic resilience. Full article
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