Every year, hundreds of millions of people around the world travel to sacred places to worship and to learn. While the practice of pilgrimage has a long tradition and is an important part of many religious traditions and the spiritual development of individuals, some scholars have begun to question the sustainability of modern pilgrimage travel. Not only does pilgrimage, like other forms of mobility, contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases and waste accumulation, it also seems to be exempt from blame when it comes to the current environmental crisis. In addition, while mass religious gatherings have historically been tied to the transmission and spread of disease, the threat of pilgrims becoming infected while on pilgrimage has not historically been an inhibiter to religious mobility. Indeed, the demand for pilgrimage seems to increase during times of hardship and uncertainty. Given these inherent contradictions, the purpose of this conceptual paper is to question the notion of sustainability in the context of pilgrimage and religious tourism and discuss whether modern day pilgrimage and religious tourism can be structured and managed in a more sustainable manner. First, the authors discuss the existing academic literature on the positive and negative economics, socio-cultural, and environmental impacts of pilgrimage and religious tourism. The authors then question the validity of certain tourism-environment models, including the ‘Tourism Area Life Cycle’ and ‘Carrying Capacity’, in the context of pilgrimage and religious tourism, particularly as they apply to pilgrimage and religious tourism destinations that do not typically show a decline in their visitor numbers. The authors then expand upon a conceptual model that can help scholars analyze the impacts of pilgrimage and religious tourism on pilgrim-towns. The authors conclude by contending that future discussions regarding sustainability in the context of pilgrimage and religious tourism should include religious and cultural constructs of what constitutes the tangible and intangible forms of sacredness of a place.

Communities play a critical role in the development and maintenance of sustainable heritage tourism. However, conflicts often arise when these communities are ignored or marginalized in the heritage tourism development process. This paper examines whether the community located within the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, a World Heritage Site in China, views the designation and subsequent tourism development as beneficial or not. The findings show that there are significant differences in opinion between the local Hani people and non-Local Hani and outsiders who live in the heritage area. The local Hani feel a greater sense of deprivation due to de-empowerment and economic inequalities as compared with non-Local Hani and outsiders. This deprivation has reduced their motivation to conserve their own heritage, while the non-local Hani feel a greater sense of gain and a newfound appreciation for their personal and collective heritage identity. Frequent interactions between the two groups have led to local Hani people resisting the heritage preservation responsibilities enforced upon them.

Objective: This study examined the specificity of both individual PVTs and three different PVT batteries in individuals undergoing neuropsychological evaluation for dementia in order to establish both appropriate individual test cutoffs and multiple-PVT failure criterion. Methods: Participants were 311 validly performing patients with no cognitive impairment (n = 24), mild cognitive impairment (MCI; n = 115), mild dementia (n = 122), or moderate dementia (n = 50). Cutoffs associated with ≥90% specificity were established for 11 individual PVTs across impairment severity groups. Aggregate false positive rates according to number of PVTs failed were examined for two 4-PVT batteries and one 7-PVT battery. One-way ANOVAs with post-hoc comparisons were conducted for each PVT. Results: Performance on 9 of 11 PVTs significantly differed according to impairment severity. PVT cutoffs achieving ≥90% specificity also generally varied by group. For PVTs previously validated in non-dementia samples, slight adjustments from established cutoffs were generally required to maintain adequate specificity in MCI and mild dementia groups, with greater modifications required in the moderate dementia group. A criterion of ≥2 PVT failures resulted in ≥90% specificity in both 4-PVT batteries across groups. In the 7-PVT battery, adequate specificity was achieved with ≥2 failures in MCI and ≥3 failures in the mild dementia group. Conclusions: The incorporation and interpretation of several easily assimilated multiple-PVT batteries in dementia evaluations are explored. Additionally, data regarding individual PVT performance according to cognitive impairment severity are provided to aide validity assessment of both patients undergoing dementia evaluation and examinees who are less impaired.

Objective: This study investigated whether indices within the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test – Revised (BVMT-R) could function as embedded performance validity measures in an outpatient clinical sample. Method: A sample of 138 neuropsychological outpatients was utilized; approximately 45% had a known or suspected external incentive. Patients were determined to be valid performers if they passed all criterion performance validity tests (PVTs) and determined to be invalid performers if they failed two or more PVTs. BVMT-R indices met criteria for optimal embedded PVTs if they were not significantly correlated with genuine cognitive dysfunction and if they adequately differentiated the validly from invalidly performing patient groups. Classification accuracy statistics for the indices were then calculated. Supplementary analyses were also calculated for a separate dementia sample. Results: Recognition Hits and Recognition Discrimination were identified as two optimal embedded PVTs for patients without dementia. Recognition Hits showed a sensitivity rate of 41% and a specificity rate of 95%. Recognition Discrimination showed a sensitivity rate of 54% and a specificity rate of 93%. Conclusion: Embedded BVMT-R PVTs are discussed in relation to previous research findings, which were obtained from veteran samples. Recognition Hits and Recognition Discrimination are now validated in a non-veteran clinical sample.

Travel to religious sites has increased in the past few decades. In the eyes of some scholars, this increased visitation adds to the already prevalent view of religious sites as contested spaces and places. This paper adds to the literature on religious tourism and contested places by looking at the ways in which religious sites act as a nexus for modernist/post-modernist tensions surrounding personal and group identity formation. After briefly discussing travel as an identity-building exercise, the case study of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, UT, is used to examine the ways in which religious site managers at Temple Square negotiate these modernist/post-modernist identity tensions.