Local residents play an important role in the process of sustainable development in tourism. Resident support for tourism development contributes to the health of tourism industry and successful community development. Therefore, it is in the best interest of local residents, the tourism industry, and tourists, that residents have a positive outlook on and positive experiences with tourism development. In order to understand resident support for tourism development from tourism impacts and community quality of life perspective within the rural communities of Orange County, Indiana, USA, this study has examined a proposed structural model which incorporates eight latent variables: (a) six types of positive and negative tourism impacts serve as exogenous latent variables; (b) tourism-related community quality of life (TCQOL) is proposed as the mediating variable; and (c) resident support for tourism development is the ultimate dependent variable. The results show that both sociocultural and environmental benefits contribute to the host community’s living experience. Economic and sociocultural benefits, negative sociocultural and environmental impacts, and TCQOL influence resident support for tourism development. This study identified specific tourism impacts that affect TCQOL and resident support for local tourism development. This study affirms that community quality of life (QOL) serves an effective predictor of support for tourism development.

Research is not conclusive about the factors that contribute to the lowered level of participation in travel of people with disabilities. Framed in self-determination theory, this study examines the perceived accessibility of the travel industry and leisure travel motivation as antecedents of travel participation using a sample of 258 individuals with mobility impairment. Results show that although respondents reported the highest level of intrinsic motivation, they mainly traveled for extrinsic reasons. Perceived accessibility of travel services has significant impacts on all types of motivations except introjected/external motivation, and amotivation mediates the impact of perceived accessibility on future travel intention.

Travel pattern data collected from a rural county in western North Carolina, United States, was analyzed using a geographic information system. Travel pattern data are valuable to destination marketers as it highlights potential regional promotions and development partners. Geographic information systems (GIS) can easily display in map form spatially oriented concepts such as travel patterns and provides easy viewing of the data. The generated maps provided a clear indication of regions, counties, and towns that tourism promoters in the rural county may consider as potential marketing and development collaborators. Additionally, by modeling trip distances per travel pattern, potential new markets were identified.

Tourism impacts studies have identified three major types of positive-negative tourism impacts that dynamically change residents’ life experiences and their evaluation of tourism development. This study examines three specific impacts, perceived social costs, environmental sustainability, and perceived economic benefit, to determine their effects on resident perceived quality of life. The results indicate that the social cost dimension has no significant effect on resident quality of life, however both environmental sustainability and perceived economic benefit dimensions significantly affect resident quality of life.

This essay explores the recent phenomenon associated with tourists’ adaptability to new services driven by technologies and proposes the concept of tourist innovation as the theoretical underpinnings describing tourists’ adaptability to novel services. To glean the underlying concept of tourist innovation, a series of in-depth personal interviews are deployed. An online survey containing 40 indicators representing the innovation dimensions is distributed that gathers 524 useable responses from air travelers. In the data analysis, a parsimonious model derived from a confirmatory factor analysis validates a four-dimensional solution: (1) novelty seeking, (2) vigilance, (3) hedonic experience seeking, and (4) social distinctiveness. This scale is explained by 10-item tourist innovation measurement, wherein the validity of the resultant scale is achieved.