26 research outputs found
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The Struggles of Living in a Postcard: Tourisms Social and Cultural Influences on a Mountain Community
Tourism scholarship is continuously advancing the understanding of tourism development as it positively relates economically and environmentally to tourism-based societies. In recent years, the tourism discipline as a whole has made little progress in identifying the social and cultural impacts of tourism, including questions of why and how local communities’ traditional foundations and defining characteristics are changed, influenced, and challenged by tourists and tourism business development. This dissertation restores the conversation that focuses on how tourism development and consumerism can change the socio-cultural profiles of local communities by addressing the understudied area of the ways in which tourism may affect the social systems and collective dynamics of a tourism-based community. Drawing on Nash’s (1977) view of tourism as a form of imperialism and expanding on Doxey’s (1975) original attempt to identify tourism’s influence on local residents, this dissertation contributes to social theories of the tourism discipline by bringing a different frame of reference and set of questions to exploration of the social impact of tourism growth through a qualitative ethnographic method and a constructivist grounded theory analysis of primary (participant observation and interviews) and secondary (written documents and pictures) data sources from eighteen months of immersion in one mountain community in the advanced industrial society of the United States. The findings suggest that tourism impacts four dimensions of this mountain community: structuring the local social world, intensifying acceptance issues between members of different social groups, shaping conflict and disagreement, and establishing the centrality of the environment. This research contributes to previous research by arguing that a holistic, complex account of interconnected relationships in a local community, such as this, can illuminate the nature of social conflict and disagreement around tourism, as well as suggest that tourism business decision-makers have the ability to influence the relationships of the major players in a recreation-based community
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Qualitative Research Methods for Critical Inquiry: An Emergent Method of Analysis from the Social Sciences
Elizabeth A. Cartier is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management in the Isenberg School at UMass-Amherst. Her research interests include: host and tourist behavior, tourism culture, and the critical aspects of power and control. Human resources, leadership and tourism are the focus of her teaching
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Using the CMM Theoretical Lens to Deconstruct Problematic Discourse Regarding Quality and Rigor in Tourism Research: Can Transparency Bridge the Metatheoretical Divide?
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Tourism’s social impact on a local community: The case of a mountain ski town
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Producing Higher Quality Ethnographies: The Blending of Two Methods of Analysis to Better Understand Ski Culture
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The Experience Economy: Regional Fair Market Segmentation and Application
Experiencing the Event Brand: Examining the Branded Images for a New England Regional Fair
Introduction. Brands and branding are critical to the understanding and perception of destinations and products and now events are even “branded. ” Some of these events have had a long history, and may or may not have been intentionally ‘branded ” but contain images and perceptions of a ‘branded event ” by different types of event consumers. Clearly different types of event consumers likely have different brand images of the same event or in this study- a regiona
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Propositions for Examining the Seasonality Construct in Tourism Settings
Propositions for Examining the Seasonality Construct in Tourism Settings
Abstract
The purpose of this conceptual study is to further develop our understanding of the seasonality construct as a predictor of tourist behavior. This study aims to explain and organize the tourism seasonality literature for a more thorough interpretation; examine how seasonality impacts consumer decision making focusing on the use of inbound and outbound marketing; and establish measurement tools that can help link seasonal destination consumer needs with actual behavior and internet search behavior. The contribution of this study is several thoroughly developed propositions to be used as a guide in further seasonality literature focusing on the measurement of the seasonality construct, specifically the tools to be utilized in seasonality empirical research; the types of seasonality as connected to traveler decision-making; the relationship between traveler search behavior, actual behavior, and seasonal changes; and the organization of seasonal terms in relation to seasonal activity
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Addressing the Need for New Tourism Theory: The Utility of Constructivist Grounded Theory Methodology for Theory Development
The Neurotropic Parasite Toxoplasma Gondii Increases Dopamine Metabolism
The highly prevalent parasite Toxoplasma gondii manipulates its host's behavior. In infected rodents, the behavioral changes increase the likelihood that the parasite will be transmitted back to its definitive cat host, an essential step in completion of the parasite's life cycle. The mechanism(s) responsible for behavioral changes in the host is unknown but two lines of published evidence suggest that the parasite alters neurotransmitter signal transduction: the disruption of the parasite-induced behavioral changes with medications used to treat psychiatric disease (specifically dopamine antagonists) and identification of a tyrosine hydroxylase encoded in the parasite genome. In this study, infection of mammalian dopaminergic cells with T. gondii enhanced the levels of K+-induced release of dopamine several-fold, with a direct correlation between the number of infected cells and the quantity of dopamine released. Immunostaining brain sections of infected mice with dopamine antibody showed intense staining of encysted parasites. Based on these analyses, T. gondii orchestrates a significant increase in dopamine metabolism in neural cells. Tyrosine hydroxylase, the rate-limiting enzyme for dopamine synthesis, was also found in intracellular tissue cysts in brain tissue with antibodies specific for the parasite-encoded tyrosine hydroxylase. These observations provide a mechanism for parasite-induced behavioral changes. The observed effects on dopamine metabolism could also be relevant in interpreting reports of psychobehavioral changes in toxoplasmosis-infected humans