Environmental and Socio-Cultural Impact of Tourism: Residents' Perspective

Introduction

The significance of examining and assessing environmental impacts of tourism is vital for maintaining environmental sustainability and regional growth in the long run. The tourism industry produces economic advantages in a lot of rural areas and provides both economic growth and employment prospects in the region. Tourism is considered to be the catalyst for preservation and progress of the environment as well as preserving local diversity and ethos (Scholz et.al., 2011). The apprehension in examining community’s attitude to tourism and its bearing on the natural environment is crucial at a time when environmental issues, such as pollution, exhaustion of natural resources and cutting down of forests are growing (Teye et al., 2002;.Gursoy & Rutherford, 2004; Smith et.al, 2010). It has been demonstrated at numerous research stages of tourism and environment literature that as visitors’ number rises in an area, effects tend to go on the rise (Scott et al., 2012) and it becomes easier to evaluate the perception of attitudes among the local occupants. The enhancement of destinations with biodiversity, containing flora and fauna are major factors to tourism influx to these locations (Tolvanen &Kangas, 2016). One activity tends to cause multiple impacts and every impact tends to make up for other changes caused due to recreation (Eagleston & Rubin, 2013). Wolf & Croft (2014) claimed that tourism tends to excessive usage of resources. The type of infrastructure that exists for tourism is important in relation to the effects. The subtleties of the association between ‘hosts and visitors’ (Spencer, 2013) in tourism, and the ‘effects’ and impact of tourists visits to ‘host communities’, are subjects that preoccupied learning of tourism from its inception (Soufi, 2014). Few academicians have examined pro- poor tourism progress that addresses social, ecological and cultural overheads and advantages (Tovar & Lockwood; 2008), while others have laid their emphasis on actions that would lead to the formation of sustainable tourism yields (Mowforth & Munt 2009; Fennel 2008). Researchers have examined the precise effects specifying the overheads and advantages of tourism growth on the entities or communities in addition to the controlling variables that impact the residents’ perceptions of the effects (Usher &Kerstetter, 2014).