Factions and Enclaves: Small Towns and Socially Unsustainable Tourism Development

Pressured by the decline of extractive industries and agriculture, many small towns are trying to acquire a share of the tourism industry. While some communities decide to develop tourism from within their towns, often rural places turn to large-scale privately owned tourism enterprises to act as engines of economic development. While many studies have examined how tourism can have negative social impacts in rural communities, few studies detail how rural communities’ attitudes toward tourism can suffer when locals feel alienated from planning/development decisions. In this study, the authors examined data from participant observation and semistructured interviews in Williams, Arizona, to determine whether changes in community attitudes toward tourism followed patterns suggested by the established theoretical models of social carrying capacity and community adaptation to a social disruption. We found that Williams is a case where the fast pace of tourism development causes community attitudes toward tourism to decline over time.