Three Models of Residents’ Reaction (2)

The third way in which residents respond and react to tourism is one developed by myself and John Crompton. When we talked about the Residents’ Strategies Model and in this particularly continue, there were four types of reactions, embracement,tolerance,adjustment and withdrawal. And as we go through each of the steps, one finds that we’ve increasing tourism, we get this type of reaction from embracement to withdrawal. So what do we mean by this? Embracement, and I share some examples of a resident share with me, as a conducted in defend review of them, embracement means residents eagerly welcome tourists and enthusiastic about them. So as someone said I love it, bring more.

Or as someone else said we love all the tourists, send them here. So we find here in this picture of silly striation when Disney announce the decision to come, he would certainly have embraced by chief executive and also the other lady in the picture,was chief secondary at that time. Tolerance is the second responds and reaction. And this demonstration show degree of ambivalence that is uncertainty or doubt shown towards tourism. So some parts of the tourism are liked and other elements are disliked. Residents endure some of these unpleasant aspects without developing in resentment because of the contributions that tourism make to the community. So for example,as someone shared with me, I personally like having tourists around.

Sure sometime they’re a nuisance when they comes to driving, but it’s not a big deal. Another one said tourists are necessary evil for the local economy, it is an important source for many people’s income and livelihood, therefore I will tolerate the hassles that come along with them. And sharing here, a picture with you about the incident about Hong Kong tourism. Certainly,Hong Kong will welcoming of the tourists, particularly coming to visit Disneyland. So here we have an immigration border control officer.

On one hand,yes,we want the tourists to come, and another issue at that time was the right of abode issue where people who have relative or parents who are Hong Kong residents would try to come into stay in Hong Kong after the handover. There were people who were denied entry to come to Hong Kong and live permanently, so this is an example of tolerance. Yes,we want tourists but not too many people from the same place. The third type of reaction we found was adjustment. Residents re-scheduled activities to escape the crowds and avoid the inconveniences. I think Dogan called this at similar type of responses as well.

So as one person shared with me, oh,well your accustom,your lifestyle to when tourists are in. For example, my wife re-orients her grocery shopping and avoids the shopping crowds. Lastly we have withdrawal, this is where the residents remove themselves from the community. It is a negative strategy and it also include psychological withdrawal and avoidance of interaction with tourists. So it’s not only about physical contact or no contact but also in terms of avoidance behavior which is also mentioned earlier on. So some of the comments were made and this is coming from a resident of friend book in texts.

Population of 6500 during Octoberfest, over the two weekends they will have approximate 250,000 visitors come in. So one person said, during Octoberfest weekend I asked several friends if they were going to Octoberfest, and they said “Are you kidding? We are leaving!” Another one said in relation to Mardi Gras festival, in Galveston down by the coast Galveston island, the Mardi Gras was a major event, and obviously people love partying they drink as well. This particular resident “I plan to move out as soon as I can. I can refuse to be here next year to have to battle with them. That is the tourists again.” So why was this person so upset? The contacts were their drive.

Many people from Houston would descend upon Galveston. They park their car all over the place because it is inefficient car parking. And then many of the guests celebrating Mardi Gras get drunk, so they’ve a loud noise behavior and then they warm and abuse over you are along.Yes. You’ve got the clean. So this particular residence said “I’ve had enough! I’m leaving!”

So when we look at the embracement-withdrawal continuum, one of the thing that we notice as similar to the previous one that it’s not necessary prescriptive as I mentioned. Yes,each of the cases we went from one stage of reaction to the next stage as the tourist’s arrival increased, things got went positive to negative. While we’ve discovered in terms of strategies and adopts with the embracement-withdrawal continuum them, is that some of the strategy may adopted by the resident concurrently or simultaneously? so what we find is that when it comes to the positive benefit they will embrace those, but when it comes to some of those negative impacts, their responds maybe one of avoidance or withdrawal.

We also need to recognize that as time moves on the strategies can shift over time, they are not fixed. And in our research, in developing embracement-withdrawal continuum, there are no examples of aggressive opposition or behavior as was found by Doxey and Dogan. So we also need to recognize an acknowledge that the way in which the residents react is also a function of how the tourists’ behavior. So therefore, if you get good quality tourists, this is not going to be a problem. Again more than often, the problem of tourism that has been created and which are negative tend to be problem relating to mass tourism and mass tourists. That’s all I like share with you about the impact of tourism.

Thank you very much for listening.