economic and social impact of tourism on a small town peterborough new hampshire经济和社会的影响旅游业在彼得伯勒新罕布什尔州的一个小镇.pdfVIP

J. Service Science Management, 2009, 2: 61-70 Published Online June 2009 in SciRes (www.SciRP.org/journal/jssm) Economic and Social Impact of Tourism on a Small Town: Peterborough New Hampshire Tomoko Tsundoda, Samuel Mendlinger Department of Administrative Sciences, Metropolitan College, Boston University, 808 Commonwealth Ave. Boston MA. 02215, USA. Email: mendling@ Received March 5th, 2009; revised April 10th, 2009, accepted May 20th, 2009. ABSTRACT This study examined the perceived impacts of tourism on the lives of people from a small New England town. Twenty seven in-depth unstructured interviews were conducted. The study found that most people perceive both positive and negative impacts of tourism and do not want to change their town for increased tourism development even if it results in increased revenue. People recognized tourism’s benefit to the town’s economy but less so to their economic situation. Working locals expressed worry regarding the town’s gradually polarized economy and divided social classes and re- gard tourism as one of the causes. Wealthier members generally view tourism at its present level as beneficial. For fur- ther tourism development Peterborough’ population will need to solve this dilemma. Keywords: polarization, tourism development and consequence 1. Introduction Studies on the impacts of tourism have shown that a des- residents who were economically dependent on tourism tination’s population recognizes economic and social had a more positive attitude towards the tourism industry benefits and costs of tourism on their community and than those who were not. Besculides et al. [26] studied lives [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Economic benefits are usu- how differently the Hispanic and non- Hispanic popula- ally regarded as the most important benefits of tourism tions living along the Los Caminos Antiguos Scenic and and incl