Putting social impact assessment to the test as a method for implementing responsible tourism practice
- International Centre for Research in Events, Tourism and Hospitality (ICRETH), Leeds Beckett University, Headingley Campus, Macaulay Hall 103, Leeds LS6 3QS (United Kingdom)
- Professor of Cultural Geography, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, PO Box 800, 9700AV Groningen (Netherlands)
- The Forest Trust, Chemin de Chantavril 2, 1260 Nyon (Switzerland)
The discourse on the social impacts of tourism needs to shift from the current descriptive critique of tourism to considering what can be done in actual practice to embed the management of tourism's social impacts into the existing planning, product development and operational processes of tourism businesses. A pragmatic approach for designing research methodologies, social management systems and initial actions, which is shaped by the real world operational constraints and existing systems used in the tourism industry, is needed. Our pilot study with a small Bulgarian travel company put social impact assessment (SIA) to the test to see if it could provide this desired approach and assist in implementing responsible tourism development practice, especially in small tourism businesses. Our findings showed that our adapted SIA method has value as a practical method for embedding a responsible tourism approach. While there were some challenges, SIA proved to be effective in assisting the staff of our test case tourism business to better understand their social impacts on their local communities and to identify actions to take. - Highlights: • Pragmatic approach is needed for the responsible management of social impacts of tourism. • Our adapted Social impact Assessment (SIA) method has value as a practical method. • SIA can be embedded into tourism businesses existing ‘ways of doing things’. • We identified challenges and ways to improve our method to better suit small tourism business context.
- OSTI ID:
- 22479770
- Journal Information:
- Environmental Impact Assessment Review, Vol. 55; Other Information: Copyright (c) 2015 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0195-9255
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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