COST Action on Tourism Impacts

Introduction

Tourism is a major contributor to economic growth, providing significant revenues, employment Tourism is a major contributor to economic growth. However, high levels of tourism activity often result in negative social, cultural, environmental, and psychological outcomes for destination communities. The current approaches to assessing tourism impacts often overlook these negative consequences, relying solely on economic indicators. However, researchers, governments, and international organizations have emphasized the need for appropriate metrics to comprehensively evaluate tourism’s multidimensional impacts.

Aim

The purpose of this COST Action is to foster collaboration across various fields and organizations to jointly develop an overarching framework for assessing and improving the impacts of tourism. This will be achieved by bringing together a transdisciplinary network of scholars, industry experts, government bodies, international organizations, and the general public, while exploring opportunities arising from the synergy between different fields and areas of expertise. The working group activities will be organized by impact domains and by functions to achieve the research coordination and capacity-building objectives of the Action, addressing each domain of tourism impacts, maximizing networking collaboration and stakeholder involvement, and broadly disseminating results while building new capacities.

Working Groups

WG1: Socio-Economic Impacts of Tourism
WG2: Environmental Impacts of Tourism
WG3: Well-being Impacts of Tourism
WG4: Networking and Stakeholder Involvement
WG5: Dissemination and Capacity Building
WG6: Policy Suggestions

About the Action

Although different countries and destinations assess the impacts of tourism, they often fail to evaluate its complex and multidimensional nature, which includes economic, social, cultural, environmental, health, psychological, and other dimensions. Current research approaches to tourism impacts are fragmented along disciplinary and sectoral lines, with limited awareness of recent research findings and collaboration opportunities across national boundaries. By bringing together experts from various fields and countries, this COST Action aims to develop an overarching, multidisciplinary, and multinational framework for assessing and improving the multidimensional impacts of tourism.

The disciplinary boundaries are particularly noticeable in the current state of tourism impact research. Tourism research has roots in diverse academic disciplines, including geography, sociology, economics, anthropology, and environmental science. Each of these disciplines initially contributed unique perspectives and methodologies to understand tourism’s multifaceted and complex nature. However, over time, each discipline has tended to focus on its specific dimension of tourism. This fragmentation has led to a compartmentalized understanding of tourism impacts, often overlooking the interconnectedness of its economic, social, environmental, cultural, and psychological aspects. This highlights the need for a more integrated and interdisciplinary approach in tourism impact studies. This COST Action will exchange and bridge multidisciplinary expertise, develop a common research agenda on tourism’s multifaceted dimensions, and promote collaboration between different fields on this topic.

The COST Action also fosters collaboration across different sectors of tourism, including transportation, accommodation, destinations, attractions, food and beverage, events, and more. While these sectors are integral to the tourism industry, they are often analyzed separately, with research typically focusing on isolated aspects rather than the interconnected dynamics between them. By examining tourism across sectors, this approach offers new perspectives and insights often missed in traditional, siloed studies. The Action’s innovative strategy of organizing activities that cut across sectors, academic disciplines, and functions encourages participants to consider the broader implications of tourism and explore the complex interdependencies that shape tourism impacts, leading to more comprehensive and holistic research outcomes.

The cross-national perspective at the core of the COST Action is crucial for understanding tourism’s multifaceted impacts. Analyzing tourism impacts through the lens of a single nation is challenging, especially given that tourism inherently involves the movement of people across borders—from sending countries to receiving countries, often transiting through others. The complex nature of tourism’s cross-national production chains, workforce mobility, and cultural exchanges makes it impossible to fully understand its impacts at the national level alone. Additionally, environmental issues related to tourism, such as emissions and water pollution, often transcend borders, complicating efforts to quantify these impacts when neighboring countries share common water bodies, airspace, and ecosystems. The COST Action will bridge knowledge, practices, and communication gaps across different European regions and countries, fostering exchange and collaboration with researchers from neighboring and third countries, thereby providing a more comprehensive and interconnected understanding of tourism impacts.

To address the main research questions, new methods, models, research instruments, and classifications will be developed through a multidisciplinary and cross-national research collaboration. This approach will go beyond traditional metrics, which primarily focus on tourist volumes, revenues, and taxes, by integrating social, cultural, environmental, and well-being outcomes into the evaluation of tourism impacts. The research will involve creating a comprehensive system of subjective indicators that reflect residents’ perceptions, directly influencing their life satisfaction and well-being. Additionally, new classifications of tourist destinations will be developed, taking into account both the positive and negative impacts on local communities. These efforts will be supported by collaboration across borders, ensuring that all types of tourist destinations are included in the analysis, ultimately leading to more sustainable tourism metrics and practices that benefit local communities.

Finally, the COST Action aims to translate research findings into actionable programs and policies, a task that necessitates close collaboration with stakeholders and decision-makers. Currently, tourism impact research is predominantly conducted by academic researchers, with limited involvement from destination management organizations, the tourism industry, decision-makers, or the general public in developing research questions and discussing results and their implications. Enhanced collaboration between academics and stakeholders will foster a more holistic and practical understanding of tourism impacts and help bring research results into practice and policy.

Objectives

The Action’s goal is to foster collaboration across various fields and organizations to jointly develop an overarching framework for assessing and improving the impacts of tourism. To achieve this, the Actions’ research coordination objectives are:

Conduct a thorough analysis of the current state of tourism impact research, identifying evidence gaps and exploring opportunities for advancing research, practice, and policy.
Facilitate the exchange of multidisciplinary knowledge to establish a unified research agenda addressing the multifaceted dimensions of tourism impacts.
Bridge existing knowledge, practices, and communication gaps across different European regions and countries to foster greater collaboration and understanding.
Coordinate research initiatives aimed at developing a comprehensive framework for evaluating tourism impacts, including the creation of new methods, research instruments, classifications, and recommendations.
Collaborate closely with stakeholders to ensure that research findings are effectively translated into actionable programs and policies.
Strengthen the knowledge base of academia, research centers, and stakeholders by enhancing access to and dissemination of relevant research findings and insights.
Align and coordinate future research efforts to further explore and address tourism impacts.

The Action’s capacity-building objectives are:

Establish an interdisciplinary network of experts across European regions and beyond by integrating currently separate research communities.
Facilitate involvement and dialogue among researchers, stakeholders, and the general public through organized workshops and forums.
Enhance global research collaboration by actively participating in international networks and fostering partnerships with researchers from neighboring and third countries.
Develop and maintain digital platforms to effectively share information, research findings, and updates with a broad audience.
Provide training and mentorship programs to build competence and support the career development of the next generation of researchers and sustainable tourism professionals.
Develop and disseminate policy briefs and recommendations to assist stakeholders and policymakers in creating sustainable tourism programs and policies.
Identify and secure additional resources and funding to ensure the continuation of activities beyond the COST Action period.