Community Sentiment of Tourism
How Does the Community View Tourism?
Communities throughout the world have grappled with the positive and negative impacts of tourism for years. Oregon State University’s (OSU) Sustainable Tourism Lab was created in 2021 to support such global destinations and help them pursue a sustainable path – inclusive of economic, community, and environmental perspectives. Our first step in this process has been to quantify how communities feel about tourism.
By conducting in-person and online surveys, focus groups, and interviews, we collected data from the US Pacific Northwest region, including Alaska, Hawaii, and the Northern Marianas Islands.
We hypothesize that there is a strong relationship between a destination’s lifecycle stage and its community’s sentiment level. We also hypothesize that community sentiment levels impact the community’s tourism carrying capacity. Once a destination’s community sentiment falls below neutral, the community acts—directly or indirectly—via political entities to reduce the carrying capacity of the area as a whole.
Project Updates
Resident Survey
To understand how local communities perceive the tourism industry, researchers from the hospitality management program conducted several resident sentiment surveys.
Food Waste Technology
With a food waste camera, the hospitality management and computer science programs have developed an innovative tool to help solve the food waste challenge.
Virtual Reality Technology
There are jobs that will always have low retention rates and that technology is not currently available to automate. For those jobs, the answer is rapid, cost-effective and impactful retraining.
Tourism Lab Introduction
Lab Introduction: Too little tourism? Too much Tourism! Join us as our students explore how tourism is affecting your town! Greetings and welcome to the Official Blog of the Oregon State University Sustainable Tourism Lab! We, the students at the OSU Sustainable Tourism Lab, are on a journey to discover how tourism impacts various towns and communities globally. Our mission is to help find ways in which we can help understand and improve the tourism industry in a multitude of areas, ultimately bringing about sustainable and beneficial solutions that will help with the balance of everyday life in your area. This
On The Road Again!
Pura Vida! Costa Rica Research Day One: Truly filled with pure life, Costa Rica is not only amazing for its views but also for its various communities. Lucia and I were given the opportunity of a lifetime to travel through this amazing country with our professor, Todd, and collect data with students from the local university: Universidad Nacional.It all began with Lucai and I arriving at the Airport at 4 AM to catch a plane to LAX where we would find our connecting flight to Guatemala, then landing ourselves in San Jose, Costa Rica at 12 in the morning. Though
Music and Mountains
Music and Mountains: Our trip was coming to a close as we made one last drive along the beautiful cliffs of Costa Rica and stopped at the school to pick up the students for some more data collection. We adventured into the humid mountains where we started by interviewing a local cheese maker, a relative of one of the students who lived in the area. The cheese maker had been there a long time and took over after the original owner left when no one would buy it because: “the locals thought it would taste as disgusting as it smelled”.
Project Updates
Tourism Lab Introduction
Lab Introduction: Too little tourism? Too much Tourism! Join us as our students explore how tourism is affecting your town! Greetings and welcome to the Official BlogRead More »
Posted byosu adminAugust 21, 2023
Posted inproject updates, Resident Survey
Community Sentiment of Tourism
How Does the Community View Tourism? Communities worldwide have long grappled with the dual impacts of tourism—both its benefits and challenges. The pandemic has intensified thisRead More »
Posted byosu adminAugust 10, 2023
Posted inFood Waste Technology, project updates
Building A Sustainable Workforce
The labor shortage in the hospitality industry is significant and is impacting the industry’s ability to grow and serve customers. In 2016, OSU’s hospitality management degree faculty andRead More »
Posted byosu adminAugust 10, 2023
Posted inBuilding A Sustainable Workforce, project updates