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RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Anna Blackman, Gianna Moscardo, Andrea Schurmann & Laurie Murphy
School/Work Place : James Cook University, Australia
Contact : anna.blackman@jcu.edu.au
Year : 2014

The concept of Quality of Life (QoL) is implicit in conceptualisations of tourism, especially those used to develop and guide tourism policy and planning. At the individual level it is assumed that travel offers a number of different ways to improve the QoL of the tourist, through contributions to physical health, stress release, learning and skills building. At the community level tourism development is typically presented as a tool to improve or enhance the QoL of destination residents. More recent analyses of the actual contributions that tourism makes to the QoL of destination communities have demonstrated both the complexity of the concept and suggested that tourism may not always make the assumed QoL contributions. Research to date on the links between travel and individual QoL has focussed mostly on describing the range of contributions, especially for younger travellers and specific forms of tourism such as volunteering, backpacking and educational tourism, often associated with youth tourists. This research does have, however, a number of issues including problems with survivor bias and a reliance on inferring the QoL contributions from descriptions of travel experiences. This paper seeks to contribute to improving our understanding of the linkages between QoL and tourism through an exploratory study of young people’s social representations of QoL in general.

By studying representations of Qol outside of the tourism context it is possible to more critically examine the role that tourism might play at both an individual and a community level. At the individual level it allows for an analysis of how important travel is, if at all, in QoL, while at the community level it provides insights into how tourism impacts could affect younger destination residents. Improving our understanding of the relationship between tourism and QoL has implications for several aspects of tourism policy and planning related to product development, choices about directions for destination development, and the provision of access to travel opportunities for citizens.


List of Articles
No. Subject Views Datesort
13 Think Tank XIV The Development of a National Tourism Research Agenda ... file 6543 Jun 26, 2014

A national research agenda identifies the research priorities that need to be addressed to “inform future policy and service delivery” by government and “for use by academics and practitioners to stimulate research, partnerships and collabor...

Author: Leo Jago & Margaret Deery 

Year: 2014 

12 Think Tank XIV Hospitality of Sustainable Tourism Encounters: Experie... file 3635 Jun 26, 2014

Global tourism is, at least to some extent, based upon to the vast inequalities between wealthy and impoverished (Cole & Morgan 2010, xv). Neglecting, or actively forgetting, the legacy of colonialism and the modern forms of economic and...

Author: Emily Höckert 

Year: 2014 

11 Think Tank XIV Exploring the Relationship between General Environment... file 4409 Jun 26, 2014

These challenges raise the questions of how to determine who is environmentally friendly, i.e. who is potentially part of this group acknowledging the range and diversity in environmental behaviours and their uptake. An alternative approach ...

Author: Anja Hergesell 

Year: 2014 

10 Think Tank XIV Sustainability and the Politics of Place in Resort Des... file 3018 Jun 26, 2014

The nature of a resort will reflect the varying coalitions, partnerships and discourses that emerge from the relative power of actors within the dominant political regime (Gill 2007). In this paper we examine the evolving discourse around th...

Author: Alison M. Gill & Peter W. Williams 

Year: 2014 

9 Think Tank XIV A Multi-Stakeholder Perspective on Sustainable Tourism... file 7326 Jun 26, 2014

In this study, I take up the task to work towards a theoretical and methodological framework that allows using sustainability as a threshold concept for critically evaluating the assumptions embedded in both tourism management theory and pra...

Author: José-Carlos García-Rosell 

Year: 2014 

8 Think Tank XIV A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Sustainab... file 7202 Jun 26, 2014

Emerging tourist destinations can challenge ecological, economic, social, and quality of life barriers. These issues draw attention towards the consequences of increasing complexity that are often found as a tourist marketing system grows an...

Author: Sarah Duffy & Larry Dwyer 

Year: 2014 

OPA: 2014 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

7 Think Tank XIV Tourism Concessions in National Parks: Neo-liberal Too... file 4803 Jun 26, 2014

For the tourism sector the government aims to “Grow the number of new business opportunities on public conservation land in order to deliver increased economic prosperity and conservation gain” (New Zealand Government, 2012: 23). In relation...

Author: Valentina Dinica 

Year: 2014 

6 Think Tank XIV The Prospects for Sustainable Tourism in Vanuatu in th... file 3293 Jun 26, 2014

This paper explores the feasibility for Vanuatu of implementing several key international recommendations for policy-makers for the sustainable development (SD) of national tourism sectors (UNEP-WTO, 2005). It shows that the remarkable fragm...

Author: Valentina Dinica 

Year: 2014 

5 Think Tank XIV Stakeholder Collaboration and Contestation in Tourism ... file 3348 Jun 26, 2014

Since Timor-Leste gained its independence in 2002, tourism has been promoted by both government and NGOs as a means to create jobs, build businesses, create income for national and local economics and improve regional economic imbalances (Ti...

Author: Sara Currie & Lindsay Turner 

Year: 2014 

4 Think Tank XIV The Bukit Jalil Legacy: Local Residents' Perceptions o... file 5684 Jun 26, 2014

This paper explores local population’s perceptions of the development of the Bukit Jalil area after the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games. The work on which this study is based is important because it provides a fundamental insight for th...

Author: Rui Qi Chong & Paolo Mura 

Year: 2014 

3 Think Tank XIV Psychological Empowerment as Good Policy for Governanc... file 5264 Jun 26, 2014

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the potential impact psychological empowerment can have on sustainable tourism policy objectives, including improving resident attitudes toward tourism, enhancing destination competitiveness, and maint...

Author: B. Bynum Boley & Nancy Gard McGehee 

Year: 2014 

2 Think Tank XIV The Emergence of Cross-border Governance Structures: t... file 5256 Jun 26, 2014

It is well recognized that the local borders of a tourism destination are not easy to delineate as they are constantly changing through complex practices and discourses due to historical, political, and economic factors. In fact, recent stud...

Author: Dani Blasco, Jaume Guia & Lluís Prats 

Year: 2014 

» Think Tank XIV Exploring Youth Perspectives on Quality of Life and To... file 2713 Jun 26, 2014

The concept of Quality of Life (QoL) is implicit in conceptualisations of tourism, especially those used to develop and guide tourism policy and planning. At the individual level it is assumed that travel offers a number of different ways to...

Author: Anna Blackman, Gianna Moscardo, Andrea Schurmann & Laurie Murphy 

Year: 2014 

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