Impacts of Tourism and Residents’ Perceptions: A Study in the Regional Tourism Area of Lisbon

Abstract

Tourism shows a significant transformation. Therefore, knowing the perception of residents regarding its impacts can conduce to more adequate public policies, strategies, decisions and actions, more adapted to residents’ expectations, involving these stakeholders and deepening their engagement in tourism development. This study is a work in progress1. Its main objective is to identify the perceptions of residents of the Lisbon region regarding the impacts of tourism. A quantitative methodology was used to analyse respondents’ perceptions based on descriptive statistical techniques and non-parametric tests. The results of this research indicate that residents have a positive attitude concerning economic, as well as cultural, social and environmental impacts. The study also reveals differences in attitude depending on age, gender and professional activity.

Sustainable Tourism in Cities—Nature Reserves as a ‘New’ City Space for Nature-Based Tourism

“…Not only does overtourism cause damage to the historic part of a city and reduce the level of consumption of tourist experiences [20], but it also contributes to deteriorating the quality of life of the city inhabitants-for instance, by increasing the noise level, overcrowding and pollution, impeding access to certain public spaces and raising the cost of living [21]-and gives rise to tourism-phobia and tourism gentrification [20,22,23]. Increased tourist traffic and its negative impact on the oldest historic part of the city was noted by researchers in Polish cities such as Krakow [20] and Poznan [19], and in the world-in Berlin [17], Venice [22], Barcelona [24], Lisbon [25], and Porto [26]. Excessive tourist traffic can be prevented by sustainable urban tourism [12] the development of which is underlain by improving the functionality of the city transport infrastructure, beautifying public space and diversifying tourist traffic through expanding the cultural and gastronomic offer and creating all sorts of attractions in other parts of the city, redirecting tourist traffic to those parts, and creating new spaces attractive to tourists [27,28].…”