Schiermonnikoog: searching for sustainable tourism on the Wadden Island Residents’ attitudes towards tourism
A.M.A (Anna Maria Astrid) Wester Wageningen University and Research Department of Environmental Science Cultural Geography Chair Group Thesis code: GEO80436 Student registration number: 910901943120 Submission date: 10 August 2019 Supervisor: dr. ir. Maarten Jacobs Examiner: Prof. dr. Edward Huijbens
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Disclaimer: This thesis is a student report produced as a part of the Master Program Leisure, Tourism and Environment. It is not an official publication and the content does not represent an official position of Wageningen University and Research Centre
2
Us fjuertúer
Wat stieste der statich op us eilander dúne heich op de útkyk houdste de wacht, yn starm en eeuwnweer yn kaude en jitte dochst dien plichten by dei en by nacht
(Lammert Wiersma, n.d.)
3 Acknowledgements
I think I just wrote the last sentence of my thesis, which I can hardly believe to be true. For over two years I have been telling people that the only thing I had to do to finally graduate is to write my thesis. It was by far the biggest, not only cognitive, challenge I have ever had. The process of this thesis writing taught me even better what my qualities are and what they are not. It also proved me that I can finish things if I really want to. However, I have to be honest; without my friends and family I would have quitted a long time ago already. Special thanks to my parents, Aldert en Aafke, for motivating me and encouraging me to finish this study. Thanks to Sas, for putting a little voice in my head that I would regret giving up; it helped a lot! A final thank you to my girlfriend Anja, for thinking along, inspiring and helping me to continue when I wanted to give up.
Although I have not been around much the last two year, I will miss Wageningen UR. I enjoyed the nice atmosphere, the good organization and the skillful lecturers. Thank you!
4 Table of Content
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES 7 SUMMARY 8
1. INTRODUCTION 9
2.THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 11 2.1 Sustainable Tourism and the role of residents 11 2.2 Tourism impacts 11 2.3 Residents’ attitudes of tourism impacts: definitional issues 13 2.4 Attitudes towards tourism impacts 14 2.4.1 Residents’ attitudes towards economic impacts 14 2.4.2 Residents’ attitudes towards socio-cultural impacts 15 2.4.3 Residents attitudes towards environmental impacts 15 2.4.4 Summary of attitudes towards tourism impacts 16 2.5 Individual differences: the factors 16 2.5.1 Extrinsic variables 18 2.5.2. Intrinsic variables 18 2.6 Conceptual Framework 19 2.7 Research questions 19
3. METHODS 21 Case study: the island Schiermonnikoog 21 Character of the thesis 22 3.1 Data Collection 22 3.1.1 Sampling strategy 22 3.1.2 Recruitment and access 23 3.1.3 Interview content and guide 24 3.2 Data Analysis 26 3.2.1 Interview transcription 26 3.2.2 Steps of data analysis 26
4. RESULTS 29 4.1 Feelings and emotions 30 4.2 Actions and behavior 30 4.3 Thoughts and believes 31 4.4 Extrinsic factors 33 4.4.1 Type/character of tourists 33 4.4.2 Seasonality 34 4.5 Intrinsic factors 35 4.5.1 Economic dependency on tourism 36 4.5.2 Age groups 36 4.6 Integration results 37
5. DISCUSSION 40
5 5.1 Discussion on the findings 40 5.2 Recommendations: sustainable tourism and future policy ideas 43 5.3 Limitations 45
CONCLUSION 48
REFERENCES 50
APPENDICES 53 Annex 1: Interview guide in English 53 Annex 2: Interview guide in Dutch 55 Annex 3: Interview transcripts and analysis 57
6 List of tables and figures
Figures
Figure 1: Overview of the Dutch Wadden Sea area
Figure 2: Visual representation of the ABC model
Figure 3: Visual representation of the conceptual model of this study
Figure 4: An overview of the island Schiermonnikoog (Rebel Ontwerp, 2018)
Tables
Table 1: Studies focusing on tourism impacts
Table 2: Variables that influence people’s perceptions of tourism adopted from Sharpley (2014)
Table 3: Desired and actual amount of participants
Table 4: Questions and prompts used in previous qualitative studies on residents’ attitudes towards tourism
Table 5: Example of coding scheme + participants quotes
Table 6: Desired and actual amount of participants
7 Summary
World Heritage Destination ‘The Wadden Sea’ and the surrounding islands are popular tourist destinations. The high and increasing amount of visitors and the ever-lengthening tourism season cause challenges for the future livability of these islands, therefore several organizations and governmental bodies developed ‘The Tourism Strategy’ (CWSS, 2014), a policy document that aims to make tourism at the Wadden Islands more sustainable. This studies goal was to determine residents’ attitudes towards tourism, since the literature indicated that this is one of the aspects that has to be known in order to be able to achieve sustainable tourism (Edgell et al., 2008). An inside in residents’ perspectives of tourism can help policy makers to develop (better) policy plans. The Dutch Wadden Island Schiermonnikoog was picked as a case study given the current tourism developments at the island that may impede successful sustainable tourism. Residents’ attitudes towards tourism were examined via 18 semi-structured interviews with inhabitants of Schiermonnikoog. The data was analysed by the use of Boeije’s (2012) ’spiral of data analysis’. It was found that most participants held positive attitudes towards tourism impacts at the island. Although many, mainly socio-cultural, negative impacts of tourism were mentioned; the economic gain of tourism development seemed to be dominant in the creation of attitudes towards tourism for almost all participants. A small group of residents held more negative attitudes towards the tourism and wants the sector to reduce or even retreat. Younger people held more positive attitudes towards tourism than elderly people. There are indications that residents’ attitudes differ during the time of the year (seasonality). The type/character of tourists did not seem to chance residents’ attitudes of tourism. If economic/employment dependency on tourism results in different attitudes could not be properly examined. Crowing and a too long tourism season are issues almost all residents complained about. Policy makers should act up on these opinions to keep the local community on board, since achieving sustainable tourism without the generosity and goodwill of local residents is almost impossible.
8 Introduction
The Wadden Islands (also referred to as ‘Frisian Islands’) are located in an 8000km2 coastal zone in The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark and are part of ‘World Heritage Destination The Wadden Sea’. These islands are popular tourist destinations and loved for their beautiful nature, peace and quietness. The high and increasing amount of visitors brings changes to the islands, such as environmental pollution, overcrowding of public spaces (CWSS, 2014) and longer waiting times for the ferries (Zeeman, 2016). In order to deal with these changes and to make sure that Wadden Sea area is still beautiful and livable in the future, policy plans are developed. The Common Wadden Sea Secretariat (CWSS) is the responsible organization for the coordination of policies of the international Wadden Sea. Together with state parties, NGOs and nature organizations of the three ‘Wadden’ countries the ‘Wadden Sea World Heritage Strategy 2014-2020’ was created to ‘Experience and Help Preserve a Natural Wonder’ (CWSS, 2015: 1). Part of this plan is ‘The Tourism Strategy’ (CWSS, 2014), which focuses on how to achieve sustainable tourism in the Wadden area. Tourism stakeholders were also included in the development of this strategy. The document (‘Sustainable Tourism in the Wadden Sea World Heritage Destination’) contains all kinds of measures and policies that should result in sustainable tourism at the Wadden islands. All’s well that ends well, you might say. But there is a problem with the policy document.
The problem is that it does not include the views of local residents regarding tourism. They are not asked to share their opinions and/or idea’s on the current state and future of tourism on the island they live on. One might wonder why it such a big deal that residents’ opinions are not included in the tourism strategy. According to the literature on sustainable tourism we do need them to safeguard a sustainable future for the Wadden. Many scholars (e.g. Choi & Murray, 2010; Deery et al, 2012) argue that residents are essential to generate future strategies and to achieve successful sustainable tourism (e.g. Lee, 2013; Segota et al., 2017; Eusebio, 2018). Residents (also referred to as locals or hosts) are the ones that have to deal with tourism and tourists on a daily basis, so their generosity and goodwill is very important for the success of tourism at any destination (Dyer et al., 2007). ‘A host’s anger, apathy or mistrust will ultimately be conveyed to the tourists and is likely to result in their reluctance to visit places where they feel unwelcome’ (Gursoy et al., 2002: 80). To travelers, there is not much more important than how they are treated by host communities, so if they do not feel to be accepted, they will not return and go somewhere else (Diedrich & Garcia, 2008). You do not want this as a tourism destination. Especially not when your economy is fully depended on tourism and over 80 percent of your residents (on Schiermonnikoog: VVV, 2018) works in the industry. Therefore it is highly important for governments, tourism managers and policy makers to understand the views that resident’s hold towards tourism (Dyer et al., 2007; Lee, 2013). This ways they can make policies that minimize the possible negative impacts of tourism and maximize its benefits (Prayag et al., 2013).
The usefulness of tracking down the views of residents has been recognized by the CWSS (the developer of the Tourism Strategy). In their strategy they state that:
’Data about changes and repercussions on the site integrity in relation to tourism/recreational impacts, the regional tourism economy, visitors preference and residents’ opinions can provide important information for the management of the World Heritage Site’ (2014: 15). This data (about changes, repercussions, residents’ opinions etc.) has however not yet been collected. The CWSS states that ‘To date, there is no joint monitoring program or methodology to evaluate these changes
9 and the effects on the regional development’ (p. 15). But, these kinds of studies are more than welcome. The CWSS is searching for a joint methodology to assess and monitor tourism impacts ‘on nature and socio-economic values, made available to support planning and sustainable development’ (CWSS, 2014).
Both the literature on sustainable tourism and the organization that is mainly responsible for creating a sustainable future for tourism at the Wadden Islands, agree that in order to do so, it is important to better understand residents’ attitudes towards tourism. The goal of this study is to reveal the attitudes of residents on tourism impacts, in order to allow policy makers to make (better) policy plans that can increase the chances of achieving sustainable tourism. This study will focus on one of the Dutch Wadden Islands namely, Schiermonnikoog. However, findings that derive from this research might be of value for other Wadden Islands too and contribute to a broader understanding of how residents of tourism destinations relate to tourism in general.
Figure. 1. Overview of the Dutch Wadden Sea area. Folmer, A. (2019 June 25).
10 2. Theoretical framework
In this chapter relevant literature for understanding residents’ attitudes of tourism impacts will be discussed. First, a more in-depth explanation of the role of residents in realizing sustainable tourism will be provided. Second, the impacts of tourism will be discussed. The third section focuses on some definitional issues regarding attitudes in tourism and the fourth section will describe the attitudes towards tourism impacts. The final chapter of the literature review aims to explain how and which factors influence people’s perception of tourism impacts.
2.1 Sustainable tourism and the role of residents Policy makers of the CWSS argue that tourism needs to become sustainable if we want Schiermonnikoog to remain a beautiful island (CWSS, 2014). A popular sustainable tourism definition states that ‘it should take full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities’ (UNEP & UNWTO, 2005: 11-12). Edgell et al., (2008) add that ‘sustainable tourism development requires the informed participations of all relevant stakeholders’ (p. 195).
The above standing, states that host communities need to be included in order to have the opportunity to reach sustainable tourism. But why and how have locals such a big influence on the success of sustainable tourism? This is because of the nature of the concept sustainability. Sustainable development became a catchword since the publication of ‘Our Common Future’ also known as the Brundlandt-report, written by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987). The commission examined critical environmental and development issues. This publication emphasized that we can run out of natural resources, that cultures and rituals are vanishing, that diversity and values can also disappear and that in order to stop or counter this we need to take better care of our planet and use it in a more sustainable way.
This sustainable development perspective is very important for the planning of tourism. Because in tourism many attractions and activities are dependent upon natural resources, cultures and heritage places (Ahn et al., 2000). Therefore, ‘if tourism is to become sustainable, it should adhere to economic, social, environmental and ethnic considerations in host regions’ (Mbaiwa, 2005: 164). To reveal these considerations of a destination, residents’ should be asked. They are the people that spent their days there and can provide the valuable information policy makers are looking for. Several scholars (e.g. Segota et al., 2017; Ioannides, 1995) argued that if residents are included in the discussions about tourism development, if their opinions are heard and taken into account, and if they are involved in the planning process of tourism, sustainable tourism development is achievable. 2.2 Tourism impacts Tourism has an impact on the location where it is taking place and influences the lives of host communities (Eusebio et al., 2018; Stylidis et al., 2014). Based on previous research it has become clear that three main types of impacts exist within tourism development: economic, environmental and socio- cultural impacts (Stylidis et al., 2014; Martinez-García et al, 2017). Some scholars also add ‘political impacts’, but others say that politics play a role in every dimension and leave it out (Nunkoo & Ramkissoon, 2013). Tourism can result in several positive, as well as negative impacts within these
11 dimensions. It can, for example, lead to more employment opportunities but at the same time increase the costs of living (Nunkoo et al., 2013). Or, as often the case, tourism can cause environmental pollution, but it can also result in better protection for nature conservation areas (Vargas-Sánchez et al., 2009). The above standing examples are just a few of the many impacts that tourism can have. The high number of studies on this topic led to a long list of tourism impacts. Of course many more exist, but below is a summary of tourism impacts I found in the literature. It is important to note that all these impacts are found in different contexts and by the use of different methodologies. Some scholars examined more mature tourism destinations, whereas others focussed on ‘new’ tourism spots. What remains unclear is if local residents also experience these impacts. This will be discussed in the next section.
Table 1: studies focusing on tourism impacts
Dimension Tourism impacts on the destination Impacts found is studies of: Leads to an increase of the resident’s income Eusebio et al., 2018; Gursoy et al., 2002; Walpole & Goodwin, 2000 Generates revenue for local communities and Jurowski et al., 1997 governments Leads to more business for local people and small Gursoy & Rutherford, 2004
businesses Revenues from tourist for local governments Leads to employment opportunities Tosun, 2002; Gursoy & Rutherford, 2004; Eusebio et al., 2018; Gursoy, Jurowski & Uysal, 2002;
ONOMIC Increases in the price of real estate land / houses Lundberg, 2017; Almeida- Garcia et al., 2016; Stylidis et al., 2014 EC Increases in the price of some goods and services/ Lundberg, 2017; Eusebio et al., costs of living 2018; Almeida- Garcia et al., 2016; Rasoolimanesh et al., 2015; Jurowski and Gursoy, 2004 Tourism increases income stability Almeida- Garcia et al., 2015; Stylidis et al., 2014 Improvement of the islands image Eusebio et al., 2018; Gursoy & Use and promotion of traditions Rutherford, 2004; De Kadt, 1979 Infrastructure improvements (roads, sports facilities) Increase in cultural events offering Positive impacts on cultural identity Gursoy & Rutherford, 2004 Provides entertainment opportunities for the local Lundberg, 2017 communities Enhance the towns reputation Preserves historical buildings Lundberg, 2017; Gursoy &
CULTURAL Rutherford, 2004 - Increase in traffic congestion Gursoy & Rutherford, 2004 Increase in noise and pollution Almeida- Garcia et al., 2016 Increase in crime rates drug and alcohol use (rowdy Gursoy & Rutherford, 2004;
SOCIO behavior) Eusebio, 2018; Brunt & Courtney, 1999; Almeida- Garcia et al., 2016; Rasoolimanesh et al., 2015; Andereck et al., 2005; Tovar and Lockwood, 2008;
12 Changes social structure of societies Tsartas, 2003; Krippendorf, 1987 Taking away autonomic of residents in decision making processes Changes the social and internal structure of a society Tsartas, 2003; Mathieson & Wall, 1983 Local languages disappear Timmerman, 2008; Ryan, 1991 Leeds to colonial characteristics Krippendorf, 1987 Loss of local traditions Provide more parks and recreational area’s for Gursoy & Rutherford, 2004 local’s Almeida- Garcia et al., 2016 Tourism has improved and protected the environment Tourism conserves natural resources Lundberg, 2017 Water and air pollution, noise and litter Ko & Stewert, 2002; Stylidis et al., Travel/traffic congestion 2014 Negative impact on marine life Ko & Stewert, 2002; Lundberg, Negative impact on the natural environment 2017; Choi and Murray, 2010; Choi
ENVIRONMENTAL and Sirakaya, 2005; Frauman and Banks, 2011
2.3 Residents’ attitudes of tourism impacts: definitional issues As the table above reveals, there are many possible impacts that can come from tourism development, but what this study aims at, is revealing the attitudes local residents hold towards impacts. What attitudes are and exist out of will be described below.
‘An attitude is a enduring organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant object, groups, events or symbols’ (Hogg and Vaughan 2005: 150). Attitudes are often used in order to explain people’s behaviour, since they help us determine how we see things and how we behave towards objects and situations. The structure of attitudes can be described with the so-called ‘tri- component model’ (also known as the ABC model) including feelings, actions and thoughts.
• Affective component: feelings en emotions associated with the attitude. For example: “I like to talk to tourists” • Behavioural (or conative) component: the way that the attitude influences how we behave or what we do (actions and behaviour). For example: “I will confront tourists if they break the rules” • Cognitive component: this relates to individuals knowledge, thoughts and beliefs towards an attitude object. For example: “I believe tourists are nice people”
There are many studies that focus on resident’s attitudes of tourism impacts or towards tourists in general, but almost none of them describe what they actually mean with attitudes, while there are many different definitions of attitudes provided in the literature. Besides that, Sharpley (2014) argues that scholars use attitudes interchangeably with ‘perceptions’ and ‘evaluations’, others refer to residents ‘reactions’ (Fredline & Faulkner, 2000) or ‘opinions’ (Williams & Lawson, 2002). He argues that these different terms are in general a linguistic issue and that most studies want to reveal what resident’s think about tourism. I will also use the words opinion, view, evaluation and perception and they should be seen a terms within the domain of attitudes.
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Figure 2: Visual representation of the ABC model
As shown in figure 2, an attitude is an evaluation (in terms of positive-negative) that can be driven by knowledge, emotions and behaviour. In my aim to determine residents’ attitudes towards tourism, I will therefore also examine the cognitive, affective and behavioural components.
2.4 Attitudes towards tourism impacts Below, is a more detailed description on what scholars have found about residents attitudes towards impacts of tourism. They are split into the three main dimensions of impacts (i.e. economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts). So different than table 1, this section does not focus on possible impacts of tourism, but on the attitudes resident’s hold towards certain impacts. These lists can be longer but the aim of this section is to provide a short summary of the attitudes towards tourism impacts found in earlier studies and to describe the general line of thought per dimension.
2.4.1 Residents’ attitudes towards economic impacts In general, the economic dimensions are the key player in the formation of positive attitudes towards tourism impacts from residents (Almeida-García et al., 2015). One of the most important reasons for this is that resident’s view tourism as a creator of employment opportunities (e.g. Bujosa & Rosselló, 2007; Dyer et al., 2007; Yoon, Gursoy & Chen, 2001) and thus as an important source of income. In a study of Andereck & Vogt (2000) residents’ perceived that tourism development at their living environment provided the local governments with more money, allowing them to take better care of public facilities and maintenance of the infrastructure (e.g. roads, buildings). This all contributes to a feeling of improved living standards (Andereck et al., 2005; Almeida-Garcia, 2015).
On the other hand, residents are aware that tourism increases the costs of living: not only houses and land but also things people need in their day-to-day life get more expensive (Lundberg, 2017; Rasoolimanesh et al., 2015). Residents’ least valued economic aspect of tourism is seasonality (Bujosa & Rosselló, 2007). Due to, for example the weather or holiday seasons, many destinations have a highly variable number of visitors throughout the year. This variety is reflected in the employment opportunities during the year. Residents have to deal with this irregularity. No activity is no job and no compensation.
14 Antón & González (2008) found that because of seasonality locals experience difficulties buying a first house. Despite the abovementioned experienced costs of tourism, economic benefits are the most important influencer of residents’ attitudes towards tourism (Perdue, Allan & Long, 1990; Dyer et al., 2007), because many residents believe that tourism has a positive effect on the local economy. Almost all studies that focused on the relationship between economic benefits and attitudes towards tourism found a positive relation (Almeida-García et al., 2014).
2.4.2 Residents’ attitudes towards socio-cultural impacts Tourism has an effect on local socio-cultural features, since it affects the customs, values, habits, social life and beliefs of residents of tourism destinations (Almeida- Garcia, 2016). Socio-cultural impacts are for a large part created within the domain of host-guest relations (Sharpley, 2014). When locals interact with their visitors, it can result in new cultural and social opportunities. However, it can also create feelings of pressure and stress threatening the local social identity, lifestyle and culture (Almeida-García et al., 2016). So it makes sense that there are studies that highlight that resident’s are happy about tourism, for example, because they believe it creates more leisure activities (Trovar & Lockwood, 2008; Andereck & Vogt, 2000; Brunt & Courtney, 1999), increases interest in preserving and maintaining historical buildings (Oviedo, Castellanos, & Martin, 2008; Yoon et al., 2001), stimulates cultural activities (e.g. Chen, 2000), encourages local communities to be proud of their culture (McGehee, Andereck & Vogt, 2002) and, is experienced to improve residents quality of life (McGehee & Andereck, 2004; Perdue, Long & Allen, 1990).
Others found negative attitudes of residents on the socio-cultural plane. Just to name a few that are often found: tourism leads to parking issues (e.g. Sheldon & Abenoja, 2001), increase in crime and vandalism (Diedrich & Garcia, 2009; Brunt & Courtney, 1999), drug use (e.g. Diedrich & Garcia, 2009), theft (Belisle & Hoy, 1980) and alcohol use (King et al., 1993). It is also found that tourism changes the existing social structures of societies (Tsartas, 2003). For example, as Dogan (1989) wrote, that tourism development changes the former homogeneity of host communities. With new arrivals every day existing social rules within local communities are mixed with those of the guests.
Attitudes towards socio-cultural impacts have been widely studied, but produces way more contradictory results than, for example, the attitudes in the economic dimension. In some studies, locals seem to perceive socio-cultural impacts more negatively (Andriotis & Vaughan, 2003), where others see tourism development as something that is given their community several benefits. Although the results are contradictory, scholars (e.g. Tosun, 2002; Gursoy & Rutherford, 2002) argue that tourism probably results in both socio-cultural benefits as well as costs to the local community of tourist destinations.
Since there is no consensus on the attitudes on these impacts, scholar’s state (e.g. Almeida-Garcia, 2015) that residents’ attitudes on socio-cultural impacts probably depends on the circumstances and context in with tourism takes place.
2.4.3 Residents’ attitudes towards environmental impacts Besides impacts on the economic and socio-cultural domain, tourism leaves it marks on the environment too. Mieczkowski (1995, p. 8) defines the ‘natural environment as a combination of non-living things, that is, abiotic, physical components together with biological resources or the biosphere including flora and fauna’. Tourism can cause damage to, or destruction of this natural environment, since it is often developed in attractive but fragile surroundings. But, it can also be the reason to preserve and protect natural resources (Martinez- Garcia, 2017). The duality of environmental impacts is also something local residents notice within their community (Almeida-Garcia, 2015). For example the study of Amuquandoh
15 (2010) in which residents were positive about the fact that tourism helps to preserve their natural resources. On the other hand locals view tourism as something that causes overcrowding and congestion (Andereck et al., 2005), pollution and rubbish (Gursoy & Rutherford, 2004; Brunt & Courtney, 1999). Many studies (Amuquandoh, 2010; Stylidis, 2014; Bujosa & Roselló, 2007) have identified residents’ concern for the environment. However, although listed as an important dimension by residents, Sharpley (2014) argues that in the end residents are not willing to actually lower their living standards. It seems that locals prefer to support tourism development, putting the benefits of the sectors development ahead of the environmental damage.
2.4.4 Summary of attitudes towards tourism impacts Tourism has an impact on the destination it is taking place. Economic impacts, positive as well as negative, seem to be the most important influencers of residents’ attitudes towards tourism, since it is argued to overrule the perceived environmental impacts of the sector. People are concerned about the environment, but not willing to adjust their living standards (Deery et al., 2012; Eusebio et al., 2018). It would be interesting to learn if this is also the case at tourism destinations that are commonly known for there beautiful nature and picturesque locations. Are people then still choosing money over nature? There is a wide variety in attitudes found towards socio-cultural impacts of tourism, which makes sense since cultures and social structures are complicated and unique phenomena (Nunkoo & Ramkissoon, 2012). It is believed that they are formed within the host-guest relation. Sharpley (2014) described that this relation between visitors and host communities is complex, multidimensional and something that varies according to context, expectations, roles and so on. If there is such a big variety, it is no surprise that studies come up with different results. To get a better understanding of how attitudes towards socio- cultural impacts of tourism are formed additional research is desired. 2.5 Individual differences: the factors If, and how, a certain impact is evaluated is different per individual (Lundberg, 2017) because there are many variables (also called factors) that influence somebodies attitude towards tourism impacts (Rasoolimanesh et al., 2015). There are variables that focus on the individual such as ‘personal values’, ‘interaction with tourists’ or ‘gender’ and they are referred to as intrinsic variables. The extrinsic variables refer to the destination, for example ‘seasonality’, ‘state of development’ and ‘type of tourists’. The table below gives an overview of the extrinsic and intrinsic variables that are frequently studied to determine their influence on residents’ attitudes towards tourism. The basis is adopted from Sharpley (2014) who made a review about the literature on host perceptions of tourism development; I adjusted the table and added many authors.
Table 2: Variables that influence people’s perceptions of tourism – adopted from Sharpley (2014) and adjusted (variables in bold will be examined in this study)
Influence on attitudes Studies
Extrinsic variables
Stage of tourism ‘Traditional’ linear models predict that attitudes Allen, Long, Perdue, & Kieselbach, development towards tourism become more negative as the 1988; Butler, 1980; Doxey, 1975; Lepp, sector develops/grows. However, results are 2008; Long et al., 1990; Sheldon & contradictory. Abenoja, 2001. Nature/type of Nationality and/or character of tourists may Johnson et al., 1994; Sheldon & Var, tourism/tourists correlate with negative/positive opinions of 1984; Smith, 1977 residents. Density of In general: the greater the density of tourists the Bestard & Nadal, 2007; Vargas-Sánchez
16 tourists/tourism more negative the attitude towards tourism is. et al., 2011 development However, economic benefits can outweigh such issues. Seasonality Seasonality has been found to influence attitudes Vargas- Sanchez, 2011; Belisle & Hoy, toward tourism. However, low and high season may 1980; Sheldon & Var, 1984; Deery, balance in the end. Jago, and Fredline, 2012; Tosun, 2002; Williams and Lawson 2001 National stage of Not often addressed variable, but it has been found Lepp, 2007 development that the less (economically) developed the destination is, the more positive residents are towards the opportunities of it. Intrinsic variables
Economic/employment Many studies have concluded that working in the Smith & Krannich, 1998; Snaith & dependency on tourism sector/being dependent on the tourism Haley, 1999; Wang & Pfister, 2008 tourism sector leads to more positive view about it. But, some variables (e.g. wages in tourism) can temper these attitudes. Community attachment Community attachment, when measure with Gursoy et al., 2010; McCool & Martin, variables as property ownership, length of residency, 1994; Woosnam, 2012; Woosnam, extended family etc. has been found to have a Norman & Ying, 2009; Andereck et al., contradictory and ambiguous influence on 2005; Besculides et al., 2002 perceptions of tourism. Distance from tourism It is often assumed that the closer people life to the Sharma & Dyer, 2009; Jurowski & zone tourism zone, the more negative their attitudes are Gursoy, 2004; Raymond & Brown, towards the sector. Such a relationship has not been 2007 consistently found in studies. Interaction with In may vary within the type of tourist and the nature Andereck et al., 2005; Lawson et al., tourists of the contact, but it has been found that contact 1998; Teye, Sonmez and Sirakaya, with tourists is positively correlated with support for 2002; Pizam, 1978 tourism. Personal values The relationship between personal values and Woosnam, 2012; Choi & Murray, 2010; tourism attitudes has been explored by several Woosnam, Norman & Ying, 2009 studies, but the results are inconsistent. Social identity/social Some correlation exists between the extent Nunkoo & Gursoy, 2012; Palmer et al., status residents identify themselves with the destination 2013: Nunkoo et al., 2013 and their social status. Demographics: age, Scholars have studied positive/negative perceptions Fredline & Faulkner, 2002; gender, education in relation to several demographics – for example: Haralambopoulos & Pizam, 1996; Huh younger people experience tourism more positive & Vogt, 2008; Tosun, 2002; Mason & than elderly people. However, most studies conclude Cheyne, 2000. that demographic variables do not explain the variation in residents’ perceptions of tourism.
Homogeneity of residents An interesting point, applicable to most of the impact studies, is that residents are treated as a homogeneous group, while it has been long known for that they are not (e.g. Stylidis et al., 2014; Ap, 1992; Lundberg, 2017). People have different characteristics, experiences, values and so on, so they will also view impacts differently. Just a quick look at the list with intrinsic variables (table 2) explains already why residents should be treated as a heterogeneous group. Every human has different values, demographics, social identity, dependency on tourism and so on.
17 2.5.1 Extrinsic variables I looked at the extrinsic variables from table 2 and searched for those that could be most interesting for policymakers of Schiermonnikoog to know more about and that were possible to investigate within the time frame of this study. While examining the attitudes towards tourism impacts I will also look at the extrinsic variables type/character of tourists and seasonality. They will be shortly discussed below.
Type/character of tourists The studies that focus on the role of type and character of tourist for resident’s attitudes towards tourism are not very recent (Johnson et al., 1994; Sheldon & Var, 1984; Smith, 1977) and have contradictory results. Martinez-Garcia et al., (2017) argued that the variable ‘type of tourists’ is not relevant is most studies. Since the majority of the visitors on the Frisian Island are Dutch (71,4%, CBS, 2017), I wondered whether some ‘types of people’ were preferred over others
Seasonality The influence from some of the factors on people’s attitudes towards tourism impacts has been found to differ in the performed studies, for example the factor ‘seasonality’. Tosun (2002) studied the tourism perceptions of Turkish residents’ that work in hotels. They are often laid off after three to five months work in the high season, what might be the cause of their more negative perceptions of tourism in the low season. However, seasonality is often associated with more unfavourable perceptions of tourism in the high season and more favourable perceptions in the low season (Vargas-Sanchez et al., 2016). Deery et al., (2012) provide an explanation for these differences, by arguing that during the high season, when the amount of tourists is the highest (using community resources, overcrowding public spaces etc.) residents sometimes feel alienated from their community, often causes resentment towards tourists.
2.5.2 Intrinsic variables I also looked at the intrinsic factors from table 2. While examining the attitudes towards tourism impacts I will also examine at the intrinsic variables age and economical/employment dependency on tourism. They will be shortly discussed below.
Age groups Tomljenovic and Faulkner (2000) found in a study on the Gold Coast in Australia that older residents were more happy about tourism development than younger people, were Nunkoo and Ramkissoon (2010) found the opposite result: younger people were more in favour of tourism then elderly people. In general there is no consensus about the role of age in attitudes towards tourism (Martinez-García et al., 2017). But who is younger and who is ‘elderly’? There are many possible options to determine age groups. A lot of studies on the topic divide participants into age groups without giving any explanation or rational for their choices. However, the problems currently at play on Schiermonnikoog helped to determine useful age groups for this study. The first group ‘starters’ exists out of people with the age ranging from 18 till 30. As mentioned in the case study description, they are an interesting group because they are the ones that have trouble finding houses and jobs and therefore more and more people in this group leave the island. What do they think of tourism? The second group, I called them the ‘workers’, somehow managed/decided to stay on the island. The third group that I interviewed are pensioners, who assumable spend some years on the island.
Economically dependency on tourism Many studies (e.g. Choi & Murray, 2010; Andereck et al., 2005) have concluded that people that work in the tourism sector or that are economically dependent on tourism have more positive attitudes towards
18 it. It has been argued by Sharpley (2014), that several variables, such as wages or the seasonality of jobs can temper these perceptions, whereas others say that this is the main influencer in people’s formation of attitudes towards the sector. Since the high amount of people working in tourism at Schiermonnikoog, it is interesting to examine if they hold different attitudes towards the sector then those who do not depend on it. 2.6 Conceptual framework Below is a visual representation of the current study. Starting from the left, the literature indicated that emotions, acts and thoughts can influence the attitudes of a person, in this case towards tourism impacts. Attitudes can be seen as a positive-negative evaluation towards someone or something. Several factors (or variables) are believed to be of influence on ones attitude towards tourism impacts (see table 2). Four of these factors namely: seasonality, type/character of tourists, economic dependency on tourism and seasonality are included in this study. It will be examined if differences in these factors generate different attitudes towards tourism impacts at Schiermonnikoog.
Figure 3: Visual representation of the conceptual model of this study
2.7 Research questions To my knowledge there is no information available about the attitudes residents of Schiermonnikoog hold towards tourism impacts at their island, therefore this study takes an open and explorative approach. The current situation at the island, the literature on the topic and policy makers from CWSS (2014) all describe the importance of getting a better understanding of residents’ attitudes towards tourism impacts.
The main question this study aims to answer is: What are the attitudes of Schiermonnikoogs’ residents towards tourism impacts at the island they live on?
As described in the theoretical framework, attitudes derive from three components: the affective, behavioral or conative and cognitive components. They form the basis for the sub-questions of this study:
19 1. How do residents’ of Schiermonnikoog feel about tourism at their island? (affective) 2. How do residents’ of Schiermonnikoog act because of tourism development at their island? (behavioral) 3. What do residents’ of Schiermonnikoog think about tourism impacts? (cognitive)
As found in the literature, there are three main impacts that tourism can render: impacts in the economic, socio-cultural and environmental domain. These domains will be used to examine the attitudes of Schiermonnikoogs residents. The literature also indicates several intrinsic and extrinsic variables that influence people’s attitudes towards tourism (see table 2). The role of two extrinsic variables (nature/type of tourists and seasonality) and two intrinsic variables (economic/ employment dependency on tourism, and demographic factor ‘age’) will also be studied.
Sub-questions: extrinsic factors
4. Is there a difference in attitudes towards tourism impacts towards the type/character of the visitor? 5. Do residents’ attitudes towards tourism differ during the year? (seasonality)
Sub-questions: intrinsic factors
6. What are the differences in attitudes towards tourism between people that have employment/economic dependency on tourism and those who are not? 7. What are the differences in attitude towards tourism impacts between certain age groups?
20 3. Methodology
There are many possible ways to study residents’ attitudes towards tourism. This section will describe the methodology of this thesis and explain the rationale behind the methodological choices. First, a description of the case study will be given. Second, the character of the study will be described, since this has an influence on all further methodological choices. How the data will be collected is described in section 3.1. The final section defines how the data analysis will take place.
Case study: the island Schiermonnikoog This study took place at the Dutch Wadden Island Schiermonnikoog. This island has been chosen because of current interesting tourism developments that may impede successful sustainable tourism. These developments are discussed below, but first some background information about the island.
Schiermonnikoog (‘Lytje Pole’ among locals) is the most eastern inhabited island of the Netherlands and belongs to the province of Friesland. The island has only 947 residents (CBS, 2019) and is thereby the smallest municipality of the Netherlands. With 44 km2 of land, Schiermonnikoog is the least densely populated municipality of the country (“Schiermonnikoog”, 2018). The only village, of this almost car-free island, is also named Schiermonnikoog. Given the unique combination of forest, dunes, beaches, polders and mudflat the majority of the island is part of National Park Schiermonnikoog and the entire island is part of ‘World Heritage Destination: The Wadden Sea’.
Figure 4. An overview of the Island Schiermonnikoog (Rebel Ontwerp, 2018)
The beauty of the island is not a secret but results in 300.000 annual visitors (“Toerisme Schiermonnikoog”, 2018). People do not only want to stay a few days or weeks at the island, they like it so much they want to buy a house and live there. But space is limited, thus so are houses. Therefore only the wealthiest people can effort a house on Schiermonnikoog. Which in reality are often people above the age of 65: rich pensioners.
21 This type of tourists (or second house owners) brings some major problems to the island. Because it is their second house, they are only there a couple of weeks a year, probably when the weather is nice. So during the lower season they will not buy bread at the local bakery or go for dinner at one of the many restaurants. Beside this, pensioners do not work anymore and they will also not bring kids for the only - already struggling to remain open – school at the island or for the soccer team of the only football club ‘VV de Monnik’. It can be argued that this group of tourists brings nothing to improve the liveability of the island but in the meantime it causes that the teacher, fire fighter and chef cannot buy an affordable house anymore. Also, fewer children are born at the island. The previous Mayer Mr. Stellinga argued that the youth that remains will leave later on as well since there are almost no fixed jobs, peers or study options available. He continued [freely translated] ‘if the situation continues like this, Schiermonnikoog will become an open-air museum from which the staff resides on shore. But the real island feeling people are looking for does not exist without its residents’ (in Van den Berg, 2014). An example of what can happen to Schiermonnikoog when ‘tourism takes over’ is the German Frisian island Sylt, now often called ‘the Saint- Tropez of the North’. Because of tourism development, real estate prices rose extremely, which forced the majority of Sylt’s natives to move to the main land. Their flight resulted in problems that start to occur on Schiermonnikoog as well: schools and sport clubs closed down; there are not enough volunteers, policeman, aid workers and so on (Deuse, 2012).
A lot is happening at Schiermonnikoog and the opinions of the locals are unknown. It is important to get an understanding of how they think of tourism and the impacts it causes on their island. Maybe, they will provide policy makers with valuable insides that can change the situation at the island and help them to create more sustainable solutions.
Character of the thesis As far as I know there is no knowledge on residents’ attitudes towards tourism impacts of Schiermonnikoog available, so this study has an explorative character. Because of the lack of information a qualitative method will be applied since it has ‘maximum exploration power’ (Boeije, 2010: 32). Boeije argues that another important benefit of qualitative research is that it allows people to provide descriptions of the studied object in their own words, which is exactly what this study is aiming at. It allows residents to speak freely about their thoughts, feelings and motivations towards, in this case, tourism at Schiermonnikoog. Another explanation for the use of a qualitative design is that these methods generate findings that reflect the perspective of the participants in the studied field and ‘can be easily transformed into interventions for practitioners […] and might encourage the adoption of new policy measures’ (Boeije, 2012: 33), which is perfect since this study has the aim to provide useful information for policy makers of the Wadden area.
3.1 Data collection 3.1.1 Sampling strategy In qualitative research, sample strategies have the aim to represent a broad range of experiences and perspectives rather than showing their frequencies in the entire population (Ziebland & McPherson, 2006), which is also the case in the current study. So who can take part in this research?
The participants in this study were only permanent residents of Schiermonnikoog - meaning that they are registered at the municipality of the island. Besides this, a few other requirements had to be met:
22 1. Participants needed to live on the island for at least five years, in order to be able to notice differences over the seasons/years, have some experience with tourists/tourism; 2. They needed to be at least 18 years old, to understand concepts such as environmental impacts, employment opportunities and they would have some experience with tourism/tourists impacts on the island. 3. They need to speak Dutch of English.
Ideally I would have add many requirements to this list and make several sub groups for this study that are based on the intrinsic factors in table 2 (‘intrinsic variables that influence residents perceptions’). I would, for example, make a group with people that differ in the distance they live from the tourist zone or have different education levels and so on. In this way I would have people from every factor that, according to the literature, has influence on people’s attitudes towards tourism. With my qualitative research approach I would not be able to show correlations between these variables and attitudes towards tourism impacts, but it would allow me to show interesting findings of the several subgroups. For example that residents living in the middle of the tourism zone all perceive that the environment suffers extremely from tourism, much more than the people that live further away, or that people who are very attached to their community have different perceptions than those who are not. There are so many possible interesting factors to examine. However, given the available means and time, I will not be feasible to talk to more than twenty people. Beside this, I do have some connections at the island but not enough to realize, in the given timeframe, interviews with people from all these subgroups.
3.1.2 Recruitment and access Since I only knew two permanent residents of Schiermonnikoog, I asked their help to find new participants. I asked them if they wanted to participate in my study and applied the ‘snowball method’ to find the next participant. Residents were very eager to help me find new participants, so it did not take long to find new interviewees. What did cause a problem was to find the participants from the right group. I estimated it would be possible to speak to three people from every category (see table 3). However, as is visible in the table and will be explained in the result chapter, the actual amount differed.
Table 3: Desired and actual amount of participants All participants:
- Live permanently at Schiermonnikoog (registered at the municipality) - Are minimal 18 years old - Live at the island for 5 years or more
Age group Amount of participants Amount of participants who have economical who have no economical dependency on the dependency on the tourism industry tourism industry Desired Actual Desired Actual Total 1. Starters (18 – 29 years) 3 6 3 0 6 2. Workers (30 - 64 years) 3 6 3 0 6 3. Pensioners (65> years) 3 1 3 5 6 Total 9 13 9 5 18
23 3.1.3 Interview content and guide In order to find the answers to the research questions an interview guide was needed. The development, structure and content of the interview are described below.
Other qualitative studies on residents’ opinions of tourism To develop the questions for Schiermonnikoogs residents I looked at previous qualitative studies focussing on revealing residents’ attitudes towards tourism (impacts). It was no surprise that these studies were hard to find. Sharpley wrote a review, including 61 studies, about residents’ perceptions of tourism, and only two of these studies used a qualitative approach. Some of the questions from the studies I did find are presented below. The ones that were ‘too steering’, I did not use (e.g. ‘do you feel that family life is in any way affected by tourism?’), but the more open ones were a good inspiration for the interviews questions. The questions highlighted in green are the ones I transformed to the context of Schiermonnikoog and used, to a more or lesser extent in the interviews.
Table 4: Questions and prompts used in previous qualitative studies on residents’ attitudes towards tourism
Authors and Paper Questions and topics Hernandez et al., (1996) - What do you think about the proposed Costa Isabela Resort? Residents attitudes - “Also respondents were questioned about their attitudes towards tourists and towards an instant resort were asked to evaluate the proposed resort in terms of perceived benefits and enclave – p. 765 costs” Brunt & Courtney (1991) - Do you feel that tourism has affected the opportunities for local people in any Host perceptions of socio- way? cultural impacts - p. 499 - Do you feel that family life is in any way affected by tourism? - Do you think that many people move to the town in order to find employment? - Do you feel that community life is in any way affected by tourism? - Do you feel that any resentment or stress exists between locals and tourists? - Do you feel that your way of life is temporarily altered in any way during the tourist season? - Do you feel, that as a result of tourism, development is more in the interest of visitors as opposed to locals? - Do you feel that local people alter their behavior in an attempt to emulate the behavior of tourists? - Are your feelings of safety and security in any way affected during the tourist season? Lepp (2007) - How do you feel about tourism in Bigodi? Residents’ attitudes - How do you feel about KAFRED? towards tourism in Bigodi Afterwards residents were asked about feelings and thoughts about tourism village, Uganda – p. 879 Kayat (2002) Interview questions: Power, Social Exchanges - Do you consider these changes [from tourism development] as costs to and Tourism in Langkawi: you/your community? Rethinking Resident - Do you support tourism in your area? Perceptions - p.179-180 - Do you have any comments about it? - From your own experiences and observations, what are the changes brought by tourism to your life? - How do you feel about these changes? - What kind of opportunities do tourism offer to the residents? - How would you like Langkawi to be in the future? Probing example questions: - Do you have any comments about it? - Do you consider these changes as costs to you/your community
24 Structure of the interviews Since it is important that the interviewee, for a large part, determines contents and flow, the interviews will have a semi-structured, open character. Churchill (1991) argues that this type of interviewing results in a better understanding of residents’ opinions and thinking than when structured interviews are applied. Therefore the interview questions were very broad to allow participants to come-up with their own idea’s and associations, and not stir them in a certain direction. For example, when I ask what they think of the way tourism has an influence on the employment opportunities at the island, it might let them think or feel that I want them to talk about the high employment instability that exists at the island, which they in reality (because they maybe have a fixed job or work at the mainland etc.) do not see as a problem or have no experience with. Structured interviews forces participants to answers identified by the researcher and those may not correspond with the respondents’ own experience (Weiss, 1994). Therefore the majority of the questions are not about specific topics (costs of living, loss of culture/tradition, pollution and so on), but about broad dimensions (e.g. environment, culture). However, there are some questions about more specific issues. These questions I asked later on in the interview to, as much as possible, overcome any influence on the participants. Below I will provide the questions I posed during the interviews. The full interview guides (in English and Dutch) including context, probes and prompts, are attached in annex 1 and 2.
Interview questions:
- What comes to mind if you think about tourism on Schiermonnikoog? How does it make you feel? - In your own words, what do you see as consequences of tourism for the island Schiermonnikoog? - Can you describe your thoughts about the fact that there are almost 300.000 annual visitors at Schiermonnikoog? - What do you see as financial/economical consequences of tourism at Schier? - In your own words, what do you see as social consequences of tourism at the island? - What do you see as environmental impacts of tourism at Schier? - Can you tell me something about the type of tourists that visit Schier? - How would you describe the tourism situation at Schier during the year?
Before the interviews were conducted, I held a test interview with friend, who fictively lives at Schiermonnikoog. I was useful to practise the interview. I learned that I should take a calmer pace; let the interviewee do the talking. I helped me to realise that if I want participants to think about how they really feel and what they desire, it is fine if there are some silences. I kept this lesson in mind during the rest of the interviews.
Use of probes During the interviews participants told me things that I liked to know more of, in that case I used probes: questions to let the interviewee tell more about a particular case or topic. Examples of the probes that I used during the interviews are:
- Where did this happen? - How did you feel about this? - Where were you during that time? - What did you do in this situation? - Who else was involved? - What did you see?
25 - What did you think about this?
I also used (non-) verbal cues and prompts. For example, by nodding, smiling, looking confused or by saying things like ‘o, interesting’, ‘uh-hu’, ‘I see’ and so on. Although I planned on doing this, it probably also happened anyway.
3.2 Data analysis The aim of qualitative research is to understand information that is expressed in words, such as opinions, emotions, description and values, and so does this study. The interviews resulted in recorded pieces of non-numerical data that were analysed. According to Auerbach & Silverstein (2003), ‘there is no “one right way” to interpret data’ (p. 32). Many possibilities exist and they depend on the choices of the researcher. It is important to note that I will not be able to give the ‘right’ or a ‘factual’ description of the data since, as interpretivist believe, multiple realities exist; meaning that reality is discovered through the interviewee’s view and my background en experiences. As researcher I am included in the study and what I see and the experiences I had in my life will influence the data-collection as well as the data analysis of the study. I will try to be as transparent as possible and describe every step of the data analysis process below.
3.2.1 Interview transcription In this study 18 semi-structured interviews were conducted between the 22th till the 25th of March and the 5th till the 7th of April 2019 at several locations on Schiermonnikoog. All interviews were taped on an IPhone 6, using the Dictaphone. The length of every interview varied. The shortest interview took only 19 minutes, the longest one 74 minutes. The average length of the interviews was 41 minutes. I transcribed the interviews of the first session all within one week after the interviews. The second set of interviews was transcribed within two weeks after the moment of interviewing. All interviews were transcribed by the use of a free speech memo program from Google (Google speech, available in Google Docs). I listened to the interview recordings on my phone, while wearing a headset, a repeated the text out loud in a microphone. The computer typed everything I said. The quality of the program was good, but an additional language and grammar check was necessary to takeout some mistakes. This way of transcribing was less time consuming that simply typing and the results were almost the same. I ended up with 95 pages of interview transcripts, which I turned into useful data following the steps described below.
5.3.2 Steps of data analysis The analysis is based on the spiral Boeije (2010) describes in her book on analysis in qualitative research and qualitative studies on tourism impacts. She suggests analysing data with the use of coding, - ‘the most important tool in data analysis’ (p. 94) - which is the act of separating data into meaningful parts and attributing them with a summarizing code. The process exists out of three phases (1) open coding, (2) axial coding and (3) selective coding and will finally lead to construction of the definitive results of the study.
Step 0: read all transcripts When I transcribed the interviews, I put the pace of the recorder a little slower in order to be able to keep up with the pace of the interview, since I needed to repeat the information and ‘explain’ it to the computer. Therefore, I decided to re-read all the transcripts again. It was valuable because I got even more familiar with the data then I already was.
26 Step 1: Segmenting the data (open coding) According to Straus & Cobin (2007), this first phase of the coding process is the moment to examine, compare, conceptualise and categories the data. Meaning that all the data will be read carefully and split into fragments, these fragments will be compared with other pieces that focus on the same subject and, when interpreted as relevant to the research, labelled with a code. These codes can be simple words used in daily life, but also derive from things participants say (i.e. ‘in vivo’ codes). Boeije (2012) argues that almost no selection will be made in terms of relevance of the data, since at this stage, it is still unclear what will be of value and what will be not. But, something can only be a code when it is used be more than one person. I printed all the transcripts and coded manually. I marked all the parts that in one way or another could be relevant for this study, and labelled them with a code. I then, in a word file, made a list of all the codes and added the pieces that belonged to this code. I remained with a coding scheme.
It has been argued that it is hard to start with open coding. The ‘most important guideline’ (Boeije, 2010: 107) in this process is to look at the research question(s). Therefore I started with any information on thoughts, feelings, desires, seasonality and nature/type of tourists. But I labeled many more phrases that somehow seemed relevant to me.
Step 2: Describing categories (axial coding) The next step in the coding process was that of axial coding, a procedure in which the data was put back together in a different way. In this phase I searched for relationships and connections between the open codes as is suggested by Strauss and Corbin (2007). The main goal of this phase was to determine which elements are important and which are less dominant. I place data that seemed to belong to a similar topic, or had a similar message under the same code. It was a phase of constant adjusting, redefining, modifying and rejecting, exactly like it is meant to be according to Charmaz (2006). In this phase of axial coding, I turned the data into an increasingly more abstract framework that I was constantly adjusting, meaning that I checked if the open and axial codes were matching the data. After a long period of moving and adjusting I ended up with a list of 65 sub-codes, varying from ‘being annoyed by tourists’ and ‘islander festival’ till ‘job opportunity’ and ‘looking like Sylt’, divided over 8 main codes such as ’crowding’ and ‘economy’. Every sub-code was supported by at least 2 quotes of participants.
Step 3: Reassembling (selective coding) The final step of the process of data analysis is selective coding or data reassembling. It ‘refers to looking for patterns, searching for relationships between distinguished parts and finding explanations for what is observed’ (Boeije, 2012: 76). The categories and labels will be the main result of this thesis, and serve as an in-depth view of the social phenomenon that is studied (ibid), in this case residents’ attitudes towards tourism.
Since attitudes exist out of three components (affection, behavior and cognition) I was not content with my current code tree. For example main code ‘nature’ has sub-codes and quotes that describe feelings but also acts or opinions. Therefore I decided to change the coding scheme and divide all quotes under key theme’s (1) affection, (2) behavior and (3) cognition. This was a difficult task, since participants could describe a feeling and a thought in the same phase: ‘I love tourists, but sometimes I think it is to crowded’, so I picked the category that was most dominant and placed the quote there. Will re-diving the quotes, I also checked whether they belonged to (1) economic impacts, (2) socio-cultural impacts, (3) environmental impacts, (4) Type/character of tourist and (5) Seasonality. This again included many difficult choices as well, because sometimes more options were possible. I again, picked the category that I thought that fitted best. After restructuring all the quotes I ended up with a scheme, from which a very short part is presented below.
27 Table 5 – Example of coding scheme + participants quotes
AFFECTION TABEL
C.# Open code Quote participant Age group Dep on T? ECONOMIC IMPACTS 11. ‘I like it crowed for ‘For me all those people here, it’s very chill and nice, I love it, it makes me Starter Yes money reasons’ happy you know…it might not be elegant to say but I see them as wallets on two feet, they give me big money’ (12-51) 11. ‘I like it crowed for ‘You know, the more tourist are coming here, the more busy it in on the Worker Yes money reasons’ street, the more busses need to bring people, the harder we have to work BUT: the more money we make. Last summer it went on line this forever, I so nice, it feels so good, I know what I’m working for, and that the island makes good money out of it… that feels right you know’’ (10-41) SOCIO-CULTURAL IMPACTS 6. Crowding ‘I hate the supermarket, not only I but every islander I know and probably Starter Yes supermarket also the tourists’ (10-45)
10. Crowding traffic ‘It is really annoying, we also have traffic rules here! Sometimes they stop Starter Yes at the middle of a crossroad, come on that is so stupid (18-94) 19. Islander festivals ‘‘You know what I find very unfortunate, and very sad, that our festivals Worker Yes Klozum and Pinkster became everyone’s’ (1-4). 50. Concerned about I feel, I don’t know anyone anymore… people my age keep dying and Pensioner No crowing then quickly new people arrive that I never get to know…[…] (15-72)
The results, presented in the next chapter, will give a textual representation of this full table. There is a chapter dedicated to: (1). Affection – feelings and emotions residents held towards tourism (2). Behavior – how do residents behave/act on and because of tourism? (3). Cognition – what do residents think and believe about tourism? (4). Extrinsic factors: role of seasonality and type/character of tourist. (5). Intrinsic factors: role of age and economy dependency
28 4. Results
In this chapter I present the results of this study. I will try to be as comprehensive as possible, answering mainly the sub questions of this thesis, to later on be able to answer the main question. My interpretation of the data will be supported by many quotes of the participants.
The first part of this chapter addresses the first sub question: what feelings and emotions do residents of Schiermonnikoog hold towards tourism impacts? The second part focuses on actions and behaviour towards tourism. In the third part I describe the thoughts and beliefs islanders hold toward tourism. Chapter 6.4 is dedicated to the extrinsic factors (seasonality and type of tourists) examined in this study, and finally, in the final chapter I will describe the role of, intrinsic factors, economic dependency on tourism and age groups for residents’ attitude towards tourism. 4.1 Feelings and emotions Feelings and emotions refer to every feeling or emotion the participants mentioned, explained, showed, and described. In the many hours I spoke to residents, not many feelings and emotions about tourism at Schiermonnikoog were given. But the ones that were shared are described below; often I added quotes from the participants to support my interpretation. In bold, impact topics are marked, whereas specific feelings, and later on in this chapter, behaviors and cognitions are underlined.
Economic impacts A few participants described the feelings they get when there are many people on the island. It gives them positive feelings because they believe to make and earn a lot of money from tourism: ‘For me all those people here, it’s very chill and nice, I love it, it makes me happy you know…it might not be elegant to say but I see them as wallets on two feet, they give me big money’ (Starter, 11). One person was concerned about the future of the island, arguing that economic interest always beats for example nature conservation of cultural heritage: ‘You know, tourism in principle is ok but it also makes me very angry and pissed… for sure the economic interest will always win… and now there can be a long pause on you tape now….but yeah it will destroy Schier as well…’ (Starter, 16)
Socio-cultural impacts Clearly more feelings are ascribed to the perceived socio-cultural impacts of tourism. The main issue mentioned is that the island is too crowded and that this frustrates residents: “Often I feel like meeeeeen I’m fucking done with all those tourists, get out of my way’ (Worker, 4), ‘It is getting alarming and terrible with all those people here’ (Pensioner, 14). The crowding issue seems to be the biggest problem in the supermarket: ‘for sure the biggest frustration of all islanders in the supermarket’ (Starter, 11), there is only one and ‘it keeps getting more and more crowded’ (Pensioner, 13). The bustle in the only village is another point of frustration: ‘like they take over the whole village with their conversations’ (Pensioner, 8) and so is the crowing on the streets: ‘really annoying, we also have traffic rules here!’ (Starter, 18).
Participants state that the flow of tourists has impacts on cultural activities, like traditional festivals, too, ‘You know what I find very unfortunate, and very sad, that our festivals Klozum and Pinkster became everyone’s’ (Worker, 1), ‘It is completely changed, it’s terrible (Pensioner, 13). But a younger participant mentioned: ‘I really love it that we can show these funny days and festivals to the other people’ (Starters, 3). Others feel that tourism changes community life: ‘in the past, everybody knew what was going one with everybody…but now sometimes it is like ‘yes, yes, he was in the hospital’ and then I am like huh, I
29 didn’t know. Well this would have been impossible 10, 20 years ago. If you were pregnant, everybody new, today is it not like that anymore. I find it very unfortunate that this is not the case anymore, deeply unfortunate’ (Worker, 7). A few pensioners and workers shared their concerns about how tourism endangers the future of the old village: ‘rich tourist keep buying houses in the village, I’m afraid that it is will become a ghost village’ (Pensioner, 8)
Environmental impacts Only some people expressed feelings towards environmental impacts of tourism. A few pensioners had very strong emotions towards the increasing amount of cars on the island, one of them almost cried and argued: ‘everything on this island changes, but that with the cars, it is destroying the island! Also the nature, and safety here, it’s so sad, so sad, so sad… they give out way too many permits‘ (Pensioner, 15). Somebody else mentioned to be unhappy about artificial things disturbing the natural environment (e.g. flags, blow carts, kites): ‘I want to pull those flags out! And remove all those stupid kites from the beach, they are disturbing my whole horizon!’ (Pensioner, 17).
4.2 Actions and behavior Actions and behaviours are the things that residents do, how they act, because of tourism. Because of tourism at the island, people argue to undergo different behaviour, as is described below. I did not specifically ask residents whether they took action on something related to tourism, of if they have certain behaviour towards or because of tourism, residents just explained certain behaviours about tourism related topics.
Economic impacts A resident took over the restaurant of his parents and explained that they normally close in September, something he would never do now since ‘September is really a month were you can say, wow we make a lot of profit there’ (Worker, 2). Somebody else explained that she really wanted to remain living on the island but it forced her to then work in tourism ‘I mean, I have to work in the hospitality because, there is almost no other options here, if I want to do something differently I have to go of the island’ (Starter, 3). A pensioner reflects on the work situation at the island and argues that ‘in the past people used to work and live at the island, but if you look now, winter of summer, more and more people are arriving at the island with the first boat to work here, those people cannot afford living on the island anymore, the houses are getting too expensive. It is not Sylt here yet, but it is starting to look more and more like it’ (Pensioner, 13).
Socio-cultural impacts An impact that was often mentioned is the behaviour of visitor on the road: ‘like we don’t have any traffic rules, sometimes I stop and explain to them that we do!’ (Pensioner, 9). Residents argue to avoid the village and the supermarket at specific times, because: ’it is simply too crowded, the best thing you can do is go during ‘boat times’ [when everybody is on their way to the boat and back] but sometimes I can’t because I have to work, that sucks’ (Starter, 10). Some residents said that they sometimes confront people with their behaviour in the supermarket: …then they ask me if they can go first, because “they only have 2 little things”. Then I always ask them “do you live here?” and they say “no, no, no”, and I: “well, than there is no hurry right? Because I’m in this supermarket every week, so no you cannot go before me”. Maybe I sound like a mad old woman but somebody has to stop them!’ (Pensioner, 9). Another resident does not travel with the ferry in the weekend anymore since ‘it is so incredibly busy at the ferry, it is just not nice anymore’ (Pensioner, 17).
30 Residents explained that they do not go to the traditional festivals anymore because there are too many tourists (Pensioner, 14). Or, as Worker 6 puts it: ‘because the people that come to these events are not my people anymore, I don’t know them and they don’t know our festival’. ‘The flow of people is just insane, I cannot see what I happening anymore, I only see ‘strangers’, since 15 years I’m not even going anymore, to my own festival!” (Pensioner, 15). Several, mainly pensioners and workers, expressed their concerns about the future of the local language: ‘islanders’ (‘het Eilanders’). ‘Nobody speaks it anymore, well only the elderly, I have to adjust more and more’ (Pensioner, 9). Also: ‘…the youth doesn’t care about the language, to whom should they speak it? All those strangers on the terrace??’ (Pensioner, 8). On the other hand ‘if it is so crowded people have less time to gossip about each other, that I find funny’ (Worker, 4).
Concerns about community life were also mentioned. ‘We have around 960 inhabitants here, but minus the elderly and children, there around 300 people that have to run community life here, otherwise it collapses. The fire fighters, rescue forces, football club etc. are all voluntary, every family has to do at least 2 or 3 things to keep community life running, but it are always the same people who do the work, and the same people that wait to be served. The balance is gone, too many people that come live here are not helping community life at the island, the future of our community is in danger’ (Worker, 6).
Environmental impacts There was only one interviewee that made a statement concerning an act that relates to environmental impacts. She elaborately explained her concerns for nature because of tourism expansion at the island. ‘More and more things have to happen at the island, but why? Isn’t beautiful nature not enough anymore? You would expect organisations like Natuurmonumenten and UNESCO to really protect the island, but they are just trying to get more and more people here, by organising weird events that harm nature” (Pensioner, 17). This participant is actively trying to stop these ‘weird events’ (e.g. mountain biking tours through the dunes, ‘on maternity visit by the seagulls’, blow carting at the beach) to happen.
4.3 Thoughts and believes By far the most statements that derived from the interviews are within the cognitive domain. I asked residents if they ‘could describe what they think about Schiermonnikoog’, and ‘what comes to mind if they think about tourism’. I also asked residents about their views on cultural, social, environmental changes at the island because of tourism. The residents of Schiermonnikoog have, more then feelings or acts, a lot of opinions and views about tourism at their island, a summary of them will be provided below.
Economic impacts Almost all participants stated, tourism is good because it generates money: ‘it is my bread’ (Worker, 2), ‘I live good of it, just like most people at the island’ (Worker, 4), ‘we all live from it, from locals only I cannot live’ (Worker, 10). Everybody seems to make money from tourism or at least profits from it ‘…one direct, the other indirect, elderly people (who are not making money from tourism) often forget this’ (Starter, 3). A pensioner has a mayor complain about all this ‘money making’: ‘…in the past, tourism at Schier lasted 6 weeks, now people can and want to make money almost year round. It seems to be the only thing the local youth is busy with. They seem to be so busy with earning money that there is almost no time left for community life anymore, this is a bad development’ (Pensioner, 13).
Also is this section, the islanders refer to the situation of the island Sylt again: ‘all these tourists here, it becomes unaffordable; no islander can afford a house anymore, it is starting to look more and more like
31 Sylt’ (Pensioner, 8). A starter mentions that what happened at Sylt can happen here as well ‘…we are only 45 minutes away from shore and already half of the people are commuters’ (Starter, 17).
Socio-cultural impacts A large part of the data I interpreted to fit in the category; thoughts and believes about socio-cultural impacts of tourism. Many of the topics have been touched upon already in the affective and behavioural components. To keep it structured and overcome overlap, the socio-cultural thoughts are displayed around five key themes: (1) crowing, (2) community life, (3) school, (4) language and (5) housing.
(1) Crowding Many participants explained that they think the island is full and too crowded but also that ‘this is part of the deal, I don’t know if we can, and should want to change it’ (Worker, 1). Especially starters argue that they think it can become even more crowded: ‘particularly in the shoulder seasons there could be more people here’ (Starter, 10) and one also argued: ‘I think it is good for the islander community if we get more visitors, it is just more cosy (gezellig) (Starter, 3). Others shared their belief that the island is getting full: ‘all those people that are put in busses, hanging here on a full terrace, waiting forever to get some food at the snackbar… I don’t know for sure, but sometimes I think, it is enough and it should stop. I rather have less but happy people then masses, but unhappy people’ (Worker, 7). Somebody else mentioned that there is not enough capacity to keep up with the increasing amount of people: ‘you can build a bridge to the island, but there are just not enough facilities for all those people’ (Worker, 2).
(2) Community life A pensioner (14) mentioned that the bustle at the island is the main reason that islander do not really know each other anymore. ‘In the past all the islander men came together, every Saturday at 5, but that has ended now, there are only ‘strangers’ there, it’s a shame’ (Pensioner, 15). Another resident talked about the theatre company they just to have ‘…well it is all gone now, I don’t like it anymore’ (Pensioner, 14). A worker stated that community life has changed over the last 10 years ‘people take less care of each other, we used to be more ‘one’ (Worker, 6). At the same time two of the starters (3 and 11) elaborated on the nice community they life in “everybody takes care of one another’ (Starter, 11).
(3) School Several opinions about the school were shared. A woman is concerned about the future of the school at the island. Her kids have to leave the island to go to school: ‘I think it is bad that many new residents of the island don’t bring kids, they need to attracted more families, because the school is really under pressure’ (Worker, 5). She is not alone. More residents are concerned about the future of the school and the consequences for the island. One woman was very clear about the future of the school: ‘From what I understood there are many kids with a learning disadvantage because of the quality of the school, that is not ok; we need a good school here. I knew a family; those kids were too smart for our school and left the island, which is terrible! We need those kids here! They are the future you know… there are already enough ‘trash people’ on the island, they are not going to solve our future problems…’ (Starter, 11).
(4) Language Residents mentioned to worried about the development of the local language. As described by one of the interviewees: ‘…there are no islanders that teach at the school anymore, so the kids don’t learn it. Half of them do not even speak Fries anymore. It is a bad development but so hard to stop. In the past you just offered people a job and a house at the island, but that is almost impossible now. However, we need to get more teachers to the island’ (Pensioner, 13). I spoke to younger people who described that they feel
32 ‘stupid’ and ‘ashamed’ when speaking the local language: ‘I can speak it you know… but when I do people look so weird at me, I don’t like that, so I just switch to Dutch’ (Starter, 3).
(5) Housing Residents described to be ‘fat up’ (Worker, 1) with the housing situation at the island. ‘They should build more houses for the middle class, not only for all those rich people (Worker, 4). Or as another participants mentioned: ‘the housing situation is worrisome, what should we do? Young people should be able to buy houses here and now they cannot, for me that is the biggest problem at the island (Worker, 10).
Environmental impacts Several thoughts about the environment are shared. Residents seem to have different opinions about the role of nature conservation organisations (e.g. Natuurmonumenten). Some say they do an amazing job in protecting the island, informing people about nature etc. Others argued that ‘Natuurmonumenten does many things, but they don’t really seem to know what direction they have to go’ (Starter, 16). They need to keep their members happy so that they will get their member money, but they keep organising events in the nature…they probably do want to protect nature as well, but somehow this is not a really good combination (Pensioner, 17). Residents all seem to agree on the behaviour of tourists in the nature: ‘the people that stay here care about they environment and protect it’ (Worker, 2), ‘people do not leave any waste’ (Pensioner, 8). Some think that tourism is the reason why the island is maintained so well: ‘they keep the shell paths in shape and clean-up all waste even more because of tourism’ (Worker, 7). A final thought from one of the pensioners: ‘the power and strength of Schiermonnikoog is its nature, but that is now threatened from all sides. They should stop handing out car permits and invest more money is maintaining the nature at a good level’ (Pensioner, 14). 4.4 Extrinsic factors 4.4.1 Type/character of tourist As discusses in the theoretical framework, the nationality and/or character of tourists may correlate with more positive or negative opinion about tourism (Sharpley, 2014). This study does not search for correlations but aims to get a first grasp on what role character and nationality play in the attitudes of residents. During the interviews some participants shared they opinions, and sometimes feelings, about certain types or characteristics of visitors. If they did not, I asked them if they could tell me something about the people that visit Schiermonnikoog.
The majority of the people did not seem to have strong opinions about who comes to the island. However, many residents did mention that the behaviour of visitors in general changed: ‘People are not used to hear “no” anymore’ (Starter, 17), ‘it is more and more “yes, but…” instead of sorry’ (Pensioner, 9) and ‘nature alone is not enough anymore, people want luxury stuff, and everything fast! (Worker, 7). But, as argued by many participants, this development might say more about people in general and not specific about tourists.
A few participants mentioned to be mainly annoyed and/or disturbed by people that they call ‘import’. During the interview they explain that ‘imports’ are the people that once came to the island, liked it, bought a house and only spend some time at the island every now and then. They are not registered at the municipality so they are not permanent residents. ‘It annoys me extremely that they come here and interfere with everything’ (Worker, 7), ‘I cannot stand it when ‘strangers’ tell me how I or we should do it here […] don’t these people realise that everything has been thought through very well? That is so
33 annoying, these people think that we are stupid here and did not think about anything, it pisses me off, if it continues like this I prefer them to leave’ (Worker, 1).
A participant explained that there is a clear rhythm in the type of visitor at the island. The explanation she gave is in line with what many others told me, and several people mentioned to like this flow in types of people. In the spring, nature lovers and bird watchers are the main visitors: ‘they don’t harm the island, and I’m not really bothered by them’ (Worker, 4). At the beginning and end of the summer there are a lot of school classes, couples and small groups of friends. “I am mainly bothered by those school classes, I once heard myself say: “to who do these kids belong??” they are everywhere, make a lot of noise and behave badly’ […] I don’t like to have these school kids at the island (Pensioner, 9). In the summer, the island is full with families: ‘we should make sure that they [families] remain visiting the island, that is what makes Schier, Schier’ (Worker, 4). In September, I learned from 3(!) interviewees, is ‘gay time’, ‘they island is full with mainly lesbians, but they are like nature lovers, they take good care of the island as well’ (Pensioner, 9).
Some pensioners are not happy with the nudity of visitors: ‘more and more men go to the supermarket without a T-shirt, and women are on a bike in bikini… this is a village you know, in the past you would get a fine for this!’ (Pensioner, 8). Another participants explained that her husband sometimes gets ‘the finger’ or yelled at by visitors, while driving in his car: ‘he needs his car to empty the bins around the island, this rude behaviour is happening more often and it is unacceptable if you ask me’ (Worker, 1). According to some interviewees, there are also people that they prefer to come to the island more often. A starter preferred German tourists instead of the Dutch ones since ‘they complain less, are more patient and tip more. Dutch people are always so rushed’ (Starter, 18). Starter 11 mentioned that more rich people are coming to the island, ‘you can see it you know, the clothes and stuff, everything they order…. I really hope this continues because they spent more money’.
4.4.2 Seasonality Interviewees did express several feelings about seasonality in general. ‘I love it when they season starts again, and I love it when the seasons end again. But the last 5 maybe 10 years, the season got too long and I’m not really looking forward to the whole circus to start again’ (Worker, 5). The latter, I heard a lot. The winter used to belong to the ‘islanders’; to rest, clean stuff, do administration, connect with the other islander, have their community life etc. but: ‘the last few years it felt like a lot, it was really extreme, I need time to recover as well’ (Worker, 7). It was mentioned that there are things you cannot do anymore during the summer because there are too many people and there is too much traffic. ‘During “boat time” you can not let your kids play on the streets anymore’ (Worker, 1). Participants mentioned that they increasingly more avoid the village during the season, because it is too crowded. ‘It is fine that I have to schedule things a bit more: when to go to the supermarket, when to take the ferry etc. but what bothers me is that the season starts to become almost year round’ (Worker, 5). One interviewee has a clear opinion about seasonality: ‘what I used to like about tourism here, is that it was in line with what I like about the seasons. In the spring and summer I like to go outside, do stuff, be entertained, visit things etc. In the autumn and winter I like to get inside, have some time for myself, connect with the islanders, think and read and enjoy the silence. Well, the last 10, but at least 5 years, this whole rhythm changed. The summer period takes forever; the winter gets shorter and shorter… I don’t know, I want the summer to be shorter or less visitors. I miss us islanders getting together, because now I increasingly keep seeing weird faces the whole time […]’ (Worker, 6). This woman’s attitudes towards tourism seem to be influenced by seasonality. She does not like tourism that much anymore because it is almost a constant thing. Deery et al., (2012) warned for this by stating that when the amount of tourists it
34 too high, residents can feel alienated from their community, often causing antipathy towards tourists. The ‘lengthening summer’ and ‘shorter winter’ bothered many participants. It is two-folded, one they one hand they like the longer summer because it generate more money, but they are also worried about the consequences of a shorter winter: ‘all islanders have less and less time for each-other because it is so busy here’ (Pensioner, 14). Many participants take the seasonal extension as a given, something they cannot change even if they wanted to. For others, the season is still to short: ‘if it is up to me, there should always be tourists. I don’t like January and February, there are not they many people, so I cannot work a much as I want’ (Starter, 18). This view is in line with how Tosun (2002) explained the more negative perceptions towards tourism in the winter and more positive ones in the summer; more work leads to more positive perceptions.
4.5 Intrinsic factors 4.5.1 Economic dependency on tourism As is visible in table 6, the desired amount of participants per sub-group was not achieved. The ‘Starters’ and ‘Workers’ that participated in this study were all economically dependent on tourism, and all the ‘Pensioners’ (with one exception), were not.
Table 6: Desired and actual and amount of participants
All participants:
- Live permanently at Schiermonnikoog (registered at the municipality) - Are minimal 18 years old - Live at the island for 5 years or more
Age group Amount of participants Amount of participants who have economical who have no economical dependency on the dependency on the tourism industry tourism industry Desired Actual Desired Actual Total 1. Starters (18 – 29 years) 3 6 3 0 6 2. Workers (30 - 64 years) 3 6 3 0 6 3. Pensioners (65> years) 3 1 3 5 6 Total 9 13 9 5 18
Already during the first few interviews it became very clear that almost everybody on the island, works in, or lives of tourism. One of the participants owns a clothing shop but is economically dependent on tourism. She argues: ‘there are not even 1000 people here, of locals alone I cannot live, just like the rest of the entrepreneurs here’ (Worker, 6). The five pensioners that are not economically dependent on tourism never worked in tourism. They used to be sailors (2 men) and housewives (3 women). The pensioner that is economically dependent on tourism owns a few apartments who she rents out to tourists. Since it is a small island and I promised anonymity to all participants, I cannot be too specific about the jobs of all the starters and workers, but most of them work in, or own, a hotel, a restaurant or a shop.
35 Differences in attitudes: because of dependency on tourism The question is: do people that depend on tourism have different attitudes towards the sector than those we do not depend on it? In this study, there were only five people that did not depend on the sector and they were also from the same group (pensioners, see table 6), which makes it difficult to determine what the role of age and what the to role of economic dependency is.
These pensioners shared a lot of feelings that they cherish towards the past, and explained how ‘they used to handle it’ at the island, but they do not seem to have strikingly different attitudes then the people that do economically depend on tourism. Some say it is too busy, others say they like it like this, just like with the people that do economically depend on tourism. There were complains about car nuisance by a few people in this group, but the others did not mention it. One thing they all did agree up on: community life at the island was more and better, nicer, when they were young. But again, this might as well have something to do with age instead of economic dependency yes or no. This will be further debated on in the discussion chapter.
4.5.2 Age groups Three age groups were determined in order to find out if any differences in attitudes towards tourism exist, since the literature indicated contradictory results towards attitudes of tourism for different ages. As argued before, the majority of the research on this topic used quantitative methods and they all gained different results. Again, my aim in this study is not to find significant relationships, but to get a first insight in how several groups of people view a certain phenomenon; in this case tourism at Schiermonnikoog. I will draw attention to a few main differences that occurred from my interpretation of the interviews and the data.
Table 6 reveals that six interviews were conducted with people in age group ‘Starters’ all being between 18 till 29 years old. There were six interviews with ‘Workers’, between 30 and 64 years, and also six with ‘Pensioners’ who are over 65 years old. Residents of Schiermonnikoog agree with each other on a large part of the topics, such as the positive feeling of safety, the lengthening of the season and the on-going issues at the house market. However, there are also differences in attitudes towards tourism between those three age groups.
Starters Starters, to begin with, have an average age of 24,5 years old. I spoke to just as much pensioners and workers as I spoke to starters. Somehow, the amount of quotes of starters, in the final coding document, is very small. Of course they are on the earth for a shorter period of time, but, with one exception, they all seemed to be ok and happy with tourism. They did not mention any strong feelings, believes, or action they held towards the sector, not negative, not positive. It seemed to be ‘just the way it is’. They argued to like that people visit the island because ‘it is nice to meet new people’ (Starter, 12) and ‘to work hard and make a lot of money with’ (Starter, 10). Several starters told me that they know the island was different in the past, and they tell stories about their football team or judo school closing down, but it does not seem to bother them a lot. Except for one guy, he believes that if no clear future vision is developed soon, the island will become like Sylt.
Workers The six workers I spoke to held an average age of 51,3 years. When I asked them: ‘what comes to mind if you think about tourism at Schiermonnikoog?’ they all started to talk happily about the money they make with it. Very often I heard things like: ‘people have jobs because of tourism, we make good money
36 out of it, the island cannot even survive without tourism’. The second favourite topic of this group was ‘import’ or ‘strangers’. Since all workers are entrepreneurs they explained that they have to deal a lot with the islanders that are less fan of tourism: the ‘strangers’ and ‘import’. The workers are mainly bothered by their interference and meddling. More than once they mentioned that their (great) grandparents were really poor, and now, since tourism, they finally have a way to make enough money to take care of their families. ‘And this, this history, is unknown for all those strangers’ (Worker, 1).
Pensioners The pensioners’ average age was 76,3 years old. I spoke to people over 85 years that have been on the island almost the whole time. The people in this group referred mainly to the past and to how much better tourism used to be back then, ‘six weeks that was all’ (Pensioner, 13). ‘But look at the craziness now, tourism ruined the island!’ (Pensioner, 14). They all mentioned how sad they are that the local language is dying out, some seemed emotional about it. This is different to the other groups: some of the workers mentioned that it is ‘a shame no one speaks it anymore’ and a starter said she is already ashamed to speak the local language. Pensioners mentioned to be sad about the loss of local traditions ‘islander festivals being visited by too many tourists’ (Pensioner, 17). While some workers argued to like the inflow of people: ‘I am happy that the hotel is full again then’ (Worker, 4) and starters ‘like to show all those visitors our funny festivals’.
Given the two examples above, there seem to be some differences in what people want to happen with the island, what they like and dislike (about tourism). Putting is very simple:
- Starters like tourism because they make money and meet new people. One person is very worried about the future of the island; - Workers like to make a lot of money and are annoyed by ‘import’ people that interfere in islander life by telling locals what they must do. They shared some (short-term: e.g. ‘next two years’) concerns (e.g. the islands capacities) about the rising visitor numbers; - Pensioners are mainly sad that the island changes so much, (e.g. traditions fade away, they know less people) and some are very worried about the future: ‘it is becoming Sylt now’. (Pensioner, 13).
4.6 Integration results A major impact of tourism at Schiermonnikoog, according to the participants of this study, is that it generates money. The economic gain of tourism seems to be, for most residents, more important than the social, cultural and environmental consequences that are argued to come with it. Many participants described a paradoxically feeling: they are very often annoyed by the bustle of people, the crowding in the village and supermarket, but at the same time they describe how much money they make because of these visitors and how they ‘would never want this differently’. The following quote is a good example: ‘Sometimes I get so annoyed by people on the bridal ways, but then I think, bullshit, do not complain, they provide me with income, I make good money out of tourism, I am not going to stop it’ (Worker, 4). Another impact of tourism that residents argue to appreciate is the high level of facilities. Almost all participants believe that there are so many facilities (bars, a supermarket, library, shops, buses etc.) because of tourism. ‘With only the 1000 of us, you could shut down 95% of the island, there would be nothing here’ (Pensioner, 8).
The three impacts that are described above, (i.e. positive about tourism because of economic gain and high level of facilities, negative about crowing), are described by and/or fit to most of the stories of
37 participants. However, the data indicates also many differences in attitudes towards tourism. The participants of this study can be roughly divided into three groups that are described below.
(1) Tourism hungry The perceived positive impacts of tourism, described above, for sure derive from the people in this group: tourism is work and money, and it results in fun events and meeting new people. All feelings that they shared are positive towards tourism, they like it, they love it and it generates work and money. According to them more people should be attracted to visit the island, mainly in the shoulder seasons. Almost no concerns or positive notes about the nature, culture or community live or the future of the island are provided. The only disadvantage they mentioned about tourism is that it ‘gets a bit crowded sometimes’ and that it is ‘not always easy to find a house quickly’. These statements were dismissed as not very important and minor details. The people in this group consist out of starters and a few workers.
(2) Continue; with vision and caution The second, and biggest, group of people appreciates tourism and wants it to continue at the island but is increasingly worried about the future of the island. Although most of the ‘live well of tourism’, they emphasized their concerns about tourism in general: with growing visitor numbers and crowding in the village. Next to this they are also worried about what tourism does to the islander community, housing situation, local traditions and festivals and the local language. The attitudes of the people in this group are ambivalent. On the one hand they like tourism because they make a lot of money out of it, but on the other hand they share their concerns about the future because they argue that the impacts of tourism are becoming increasingly worrisome. Some people are concerned that the quality of service will decline, as this worker puts it: ‘can we still deliver the same quality of service if the amount of people and length of the season keeps increasing? I don’t thing so’ (Worker, 7). Despite the beliefs, feelings and concerns these people describe to have; they do not act upon them and argue not to know how Schiermonnikoog should continue in the future. They demand that the municipality and other governmental organizations come up with ‘some good future strategy’ (Starter, 11) for the island. This group exists mainly out of workers and includes a few starters and pensioners.
(3) Reduction and action The third, and smallest, group of residents holds more negative attitudes towards tourism at the island. They also acknowledge that tourism generates money and facilities, but they are not really looking for more money and/or facilities. They argue that ‘all this money making destroys, and will continue to destroy the island’ (Starter, 17). They described to have, and also showed, strong negative feelings towards the current situation of tourism at Schiermonnikoog People argued that because of tourism they loose their culture, their traditions and the local language. Even more concerns were given about the natural environment: ‘artificial objects [e.g. cars, flags, kites, bikes] are everywhere and they are destroying the island: it is over with Schier’ (Pensioner, 14). According to this group, that exists out of a few pensioners, a worker and a starter, are the pull factors – reasons why people visit Schiermonnikoog – disappearing. ‘Schier has a unique public; people go to the island for peace and quietness, to enjoy nature, for ‘being outside’ and for the beach. Not for paragliding, mountain biking through the dunes and dart competitions, that is just not who we are. But if people keep organizing these things, our island will change irreversibly’ (Pensioner, 17). The people in the other groups did not share the fear of losing Schiermonnikoogs’ unique nature, while it is very dominant and a major concern in this group. Also because they argue that the island unique natural environment is the reason why people visit it. If the nature is gone, they believe, there is no reason to visit Schiermonnikoog anymore. The people in this
38 group emphasized that they are not against tourism in general, but they want rapid change, less visitor and a widely supported future tourism strategy. Some of them feel that they are ‘a plaything’ of the national government and that they have nothing to say about tourism and the future of the sector at Schiermonnikoog.
Two people in this group are more extreme. They undergo actions to decrease tourism at the island and suggest ideas on how to make tourism more sustainable. They feel alone and not wanted, which frustrates them and made them less combative. A woman described that she does not understand they there are still promotion campaigns about ‘the Wadden’ ‘don’t they understand that it is full here? and that we live here? I’m telling you, it is all about money. ‘The Hague’ sees dollar signs in the islands and they hire some Randstad promotion offices to think of stuff to send people to us, it is unbelievable’ […] ‘I’m telling you, tourism will destroy our nature and we will be like Sylt’ (Pensioner, 17).
The next chapter provides a discussion on the findings of this study, which will be done by the use of literature from previous studies on the topic.
39 5. Discussion
In this chapter, I will discus the results and link them to the studies of other researchers. Afterwards I will provide recommendations for policy makers to aim to make tourism at Schiermonnikoog more sustainable. Then, I will focus on the limitations of this study and provide suggestions for future research focussing on residents’ attitudes towards tourism.
5.1 Discussion on the findings Before discussing the findings of this study, I will take a step back and repeat shortly the motive and scope of this thesis, so that the discussion can be placed in the light of these developments.
Organizations demand a sustainable future for the Frisian Islands, also for tourism development. There is a key role for residents in order to achieve sustainable tourism (Lee, 2013; Eusebio, 2018). If they are unhappy about tourism development there is a big change they will withdraw from it, which threatens the future success of the sector (Woosnam, 2016), therefore it is important to uncover how residents feel and think about tourism, which is the goal of this thesis. In 18 semi-structured interviews with residents of Schiermonnikoog I aimed to better understand their attitudes towards tourism impacts. The data gathered from these interviews and my interpretation of it forms the basis for the discussion and some recommendations that could be useful for policy makers. I attempted to limit this section to a discussion of those results that are of value for either research or practical implications.
Money first In the literature it was argued that the economic impacts of tourism are the key player in the formation of residents’ attitudes towards tourism (e.g. Almeida-García et al., 2015). The reason for this, according to Bujosa & Roselló (2007) and Dyer et al., (2007) is that residents view tourism as a creator of jobs and thus as income. Following this line of thought, people that have a job and make money because of tourism should have more positive attitudes towards the sector than people that do not. This study does not engage with this idea. Although it is only a small group, the people from 3th group ‘reduce and action’ have more negative attitudes towards tourism but do have a job and income because of the sector. Almost all residents of Schiermonnikoog profit economically from tourism, but unlike the idea of several scholars (e.g. Dyer et al 2007, Eusebio et al., 2018), not all of the interviewees have more positive attitudes towards tourism. There were also pensioners, with no economic benefits of tourism (also not in the past), which have very positive attitudes towards tourism.
Given the qualitative nature of this thesis it is hard to determine if the above standing is really true. What I write is based on interview transcripts and my interpretation of them. But is the economic impact of tourism truly not determining people’s attitudes towards the sector? In almost all articles on the topic they are listed as the most important influencer of residents’ attitudes towards tourism (e.g. Perdue, Allan & Long, 1990; Dyer et al., 2007). Participants said they want fewer tourists, but a few minutes later they told me how happy they were happy that all their rental houses were full again. The activist starter (17) argues that the island is going down and that money always wins, but at the same time he is telling that his business ‘runs so well’. Residents say: we live well of tourism, yes there are some downsides but yeah… it is my money’. To me it seems that in the end it is all about the money. And why shouldn’t they? Almeida-Garcia et al., (2014) found in their study that residents of tourist destinations have feelings of
40 improved living standards since there is more money available for the development of facilities and maintaining the natural environment. Almost all participants in the ‘worker’ group explained that their parents and grandparents were poor, did not own much and now, they live well of tourism and want the sector to grow and expand.
In this study many residents shared negative impacts about tourism at their island; things they do not like and things that annoy them. But most of the residents are willing to accept these downsides as long as they get better benefits in return, which in this case seems to be money. If, for most of them, it is all about money policy makers should consider this when determining (future sustainable tourism) policies. They should also decide what to do with the voice of the unhappy few: the third group that has negative attitudes towards tourism and does not perceives that tourism has currently more benefits then costs.
Seasonality Another point I would like to the discus in seasonality, which has been examined in the current study. The amount of visitors, at most tourism destinations, is highly variable due to for example the weather or holiday seasons. At many destinations this variety of visitors is visible in the employment opportunities and therefore also in the attitudes of residents of tourism destinations. No people, is no job and no money. Many ‘Starters’ argued that they do not like the winter because there is no one at the island and they can work less, just like Tosun (2002) described with workers in Turkey, that were laid off after the season ended. One could also argue that seasonality exists less and less at Schiermonnikoog because the season starts to become year round. This lack of ‘tourism seasonality’ has a negative influence of people’s attitudes towards tourism since, as Deery et al., (2012) argued: too much tourism can make people feel alienated from their own community. Based on the descriptions of residents, attitudes towards tourism seem to differ throughout the year. Younger people (starters) and some workers are more negative about the low season, since they can make less money and there are fewer people on the island, in line with what Tosun (2012) argued. Most pensioners and some workers are more positive about the low season, since they for example have more interaction with the community and fewer people are on the island, which is more in line with what Deery et al., (2012) argued about seasonality. Attitudes towards tourism impacts are only examined at two weekends, just before the start of the main season. To truly determine if attitudes towards tourism differ throughout the year, further research is needed.
Socio-cultural differences
“Schiermonnikoog will never gets lost, tie it in your ears, from behind and from the front, Schiermonnikoog will never gets lost, write it on the windows from inside and the outside”
This song (that sounds a little bit better in Dutch) is what the local people of Schiermonnikoog sing during their local fertility festival ‘Kallemooi’. But what exactly ‘will never get lots’? The culture? The people? The traditions? According to some residents a lot of things that ‘make Schier Schier’ are already gone by now because of tourism, whereas others say there is no problem at all. This dichotomy is in line with what Almeida-Garcia et al. (2016) argued; tourism has an effect on the local socio-cultural features since it affects the customs, values habits and social life of residents at tourism destinations. It seems to have a high influence of the attitudes residents at Schiermonnikoog hold towards tourism. For example: almost all pensioners find it terrible that the Kallemooi festival ‘became everyone’s’, but most starters and workers argue they love to show others the local traditions of the island. Important detail is that the latter two groups have more economic interest in tourism, which is believed to be a way stronger predictor of
41 attitudes towards tourism than peoples perception of community disruption (Lindberg and Johnson, 1997).
Sharpley (2014) touched up on the more negative effects of tourism in the socio-cultural domain, stating that tourism can generate feelings of pressure and stress, ‘threating the local social identity’. What Sharply describes seems to be a topic for many of the residents, especially pensioners complain about losing local festivals to ‘strangers’ and not knowing each other anymore. Tsartas (2013) argues that tourism can change existing social structures of societies. They criticize all sorts of changes but do not really know to who to talk to and how to stop the process of change. The former homogeneity of the host community seems to be diminished, which happens often when tourism development expands (Dogan, 1989). Every day new people arrive, who mix up the existing social rules of islanders with those of the guests. Residents describe to be worried about the island becoming more and more like Sylt (‘an open-air museum with it residents on the main land’ (Schellinga, 2017). All these worries might exist, it does not seem to results in
The attitudes towards tourism in the socio-cultural domain are very much in line with previous research. Meaning that, the literature available within this domain provided very contradictory results, just like in this study. As stated before, socio-cultural attitudes are mainly formed within the host-guest relation (Woosnam, 2012). Relations between the residents of Schiermonnikoog and the visitors of the island can be different every time, depend on many dimensions (e.g. weather, mood, character) and thus varies according to context, roles, expectations etc. (Stylidis et al., 2014; Lundberg, 2017). With such a big variety in dimensions, it is no surprise that the literature shows contradictory results in the socio-cultural domain of tourism impacts. Although this study applied qualitative methods and gained many insides, it is hard to now compare the results with previous studies. The findings in the socio-cultural domain can be of practical value for Schiermonnikoog. However, in order to increase the scientific value of these findings a more defined research framework should be determined.
Environmental domain The literature on tourism attitudes toward environmental impacts is twofold. One the one hand is tourism perceived as something that can harm the natural environment since it is often developed in attractive but fragile surroundings (Zhang, Fan, Tse, & King, 2016) But on the other hand can tourism development be the reason to protect and preserve the natural environment (Amuquandoh, 2010). This dichotomy described in the literature is perfectly in line with the results gathered this study. Some residents say that the nature on the island is very well protected because of tourism, whereas others argue that tourism development and all the activities that occur because of it destroy the nature on the island. The second group holds more negative attitudes towards tourism in general, and demands action to stop the increasing flow of tourists. The question then is; why do certain differences exist? Although the answers lies behind the scope of this study, interesting is that the residents that are concerned about the environment are all people that argued that Schiermonnikoogs nature is the main reason for people to visit the island and that they are scared that they will stay away if tourism development continues.
Economic dependency on tourism Employment and/or economic dependency on tourism is argued to be the main influencers of residents' attitudes towards tourism (e.g. Choi & Murray, 2010; Andereck et al., 2005) and, that several variables, such as wages or the seasonality of jobs can temper these perceptions. This variable seemed very interesting to examine for an island that depends for a large part on tourism. However, as I learnt after the first interview: almost everybody that lives on the island depends, direct or indirect, in terms of money and employment, on tourism. The people with a hotel or that have a job as a waiter depend
42 directly on the sector, but without tourists, there would not be five bus drivers working on Schiermonnikoog. In the past two people worked at the municipality, today they are with twelve. The jobs of the latter category depend indirectly on tourism. Maybe the doctor is one of the few residents that does not depend on tourism, together will all the elderly people at the island that have a pension already. Examining the role of economic dependency towards tourism attitudes was not very useful on an island that almost fully depends on tourism.
Age The literature on the topic indicated contradictory results for the factor age. Some studies found that younger residents were more in favor of tourism than elderly people (e.g. Nunkoo and Ramkissoon 2010), while Tomljenovic and Faulkner (2000) found the opposite. I did not write down any hypothesis on the role of age towards tourism attitudes because studies were too contradictory. However, the intuitive argument is that younger people like tourism more than elderly (Huh & Vogt, 2008): that the youth thinks of money and fun, and that elderly people see more unknown people and a loss of traditions, because of those people. This idea seems to fit to this study in broad terms, but does not apply to all ‘starters’ and ‘pensioners’. The unclear role of age in relation to tourism attitudes remains. Only 18 people might not be a sufficient amount to say something about age. Future studies should include more participants.
Summary discussion Residents of Schier seem to believe that tourism in principle is good and positive, it generates money, and has some disadvantages, but for most people, these disadvantages seem to be less important then the money that comes with tourists. There seem to be more costs than benefits, which is in line with what Sharpley (2014) argued; only if there are more costs of tourism than benefits host communities retreat. Schiermonnikoogs’ residents are not (yet) retreating from tourism, although not all of the locals are happy with the current tourism situation at the island. Key issues seem to be the increasing amount of visitors, with results in nuisance, and the amount of time that there are visitors at the island, with results in several perceive negative impacts for community life and more negative attitudes towards tourism.
Therefore one can argue that tourism at Schiermonnikoog is currently not sustainable. Measures must be taken to ensure that the situation at the island does not deteriorate. The threat of over-tourism is a global problem and the situation at the Frisian Islands, in this case Schiermonnikoog, is not unique. Travel and tourism is one of the world fastest growing sectors, with over 10 percent of the global gross domestic product in 2017 (McKinsey & World Travel and Tourism Council, 2018). One could argue that in order to ever achieve sustainable tourism the discussion should take place on a national, European or even global level. However, my goal was the reveal the opinions, thoughts and feelings of a small group of people that have to deal with a high amount of visitors on a daily basis. Their opinions should be heard, taken seriously and used for determining future strategies of the island.
5.2 Recommendations: sustainable tourism and future policy ideas With one exception, all participants have, to a more or lesser extent, indicated that they think it is too busy at Schiermonnikoog. Some describe it is only a few days/weeks a year and they argue to be able to handle the bustle, others emphasized this situation as a problem and state that it is way to crowded at the island in general. There is a conflict between this tourism description of residents and the definition of sustainable tourism from the UN World Tourism Organization. They state that tourism is sustainable when it “takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts,
43 addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities” (UNEP & UNWTO, 2005: 11-12). The above standing chapters revealed multiple positive impacts of tourism (as experienced by residents of Schiermonnikoog), but also economic, and mainly socio-cultural and environmental negative experienced impacts of tourism. Residents’ shared how some impacts of tourism are currently not ‘addressing the needs of […] host communities’. It is not the goal of this study to determine whether the islands’ tourism is sustainable yes or no, but based on the data generated in this research one can argue that tourism at Schiermonnikoog is not sustainable year-round, which is harmful for the island and to change this measures should be taken so that the island can offer more sustainable tourism all year long.
Length of season and crowding An important issue, addressed by many residents, is that the tourism season has become too long. The official season still starts at the 1th of April and ends at the 1th of October, but most residents explain that it always seems to be ‘season’. One could argue that the tension arc has become too long; people cannot tiptoe around a whole yearlong. Nobody can be the perfect friendly host for almost 365 days a year, people need a break and holiday too. If not, people can get frustrated and annoyed by tourists. As Sharpley (2014) argued, attitudes towards tourism are mainly created in the host-guest domain. An unhappy host is perceived to have a bad influence on the guests and will view tourism more negatively and might even withdraw from it (Martinez-Garcia et al., 2017; Eusebio et al., 2018).
The increase in the length of season is something that worries the majority of the residents and should be acted upon by policy makers. Especially in combination with the not new, but still extreme crowding in the summer holiday season in The Netherlands (i.e. July-August). As described in the results chapter, crowding in the village (including the supermarket and café’s and restaurants) seems to be the one of the main frustrations of residents. The beach and dunes are believed to be wide enough for everybody. Therefore future policies should be developed that focus on the village and visitor numbers in general. Based on the data gathered in this study and my interpretation of it, I determined some policy recommendations below that could help to make tourism at Schiermonnikoog (more) sustainable. I did not undergo an in-depth examination of the feasibility of these ideas, but aimed to provide some striking general suggestions for future policies on behalf of the majority of the residents of the island that participated in this study.
1. Change housing situation A frustration of many residents is that rich ‘non-islanders’ are buying - the very expensive - houses in the (old) village, thereby oppressing mainly younger local residents, leaving them unable to afford a house. Residents want this movement to be stopped, which requires policy measures. The outflow of people results for example in not enough volunteers and shops and sport clubs that are closing down, a few of the impacts that Deuse (2012) also mentioned. If nothing happens (young) people will continue to leave the island, which degrades the quality of life at the island (Deuse, 2012).
A possible solution for this problem, proposed by locals, could be that houses that become available are first offered to local residents that are searching for a (new) house. Residents also argued that the municipality (or another organization) should organize a fund for people that want to settle at the island but have not enough money. Big houses could be split into multiple units, making them affordable for starters or small families. Houses that are intended for permanent use should be used in that way; the municipality should invest in enforcement.
44 2. Limit amount of annual visitors A second option could be to limit the amount of annual visitors. It has always been very busy during the summer period, but it is even more crowded now. Also the amount of people that visit the island in the shoulder seasons and winter is completely different than 10-15 years ago. The municipality could decide to regulate the amount of visitors in some way. The ferry to the island is already a way of ‘natural’ regulation, but when it is busy there are extra boats that sail constantly. Many residents’ explained that they would prefer two boats a day, with comes down to two thousand day guests. Regulation of visitor numbers at popular tourists destinations is a global discussion and can happen in many different ways. Many participants would like to discuss this issue and come up with a future strategy on how to handle the increasing flow of visitors.
3. Limit access and activities Another idea could be to close down the island for, for example, one month per year. Residents complain that they do not know everyone anymore, and that the season in too long; that they need time to recover. By banning tourism for example in November (a less busy month), locals can do all those things they state to miss currently. There are several touristic places around the world that closed down (permanently) because of over-tourism. Islands as Kho Phi-Phi and Komodo in Indonesia, Uluru rock in Australia and the Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon in Iceland all suffered from over-tourism and banned tourists for several periods of time (Johnston, 2019). This is most often to let the natural surrounding recover, but it might be effective for humans too. Schiermonnikoog could also not allow tourists and stop all rentals and all actiticities for one month a year. It might be difficult to strictly regulate, but with such a small community people will notice non–locals.
4. Realize car-free zones/village in July-August A large part of the participants complained about the amount of cars on the island, which has increased enormously over the last 15 years. The only people that are allowed to have a car on Schiermonnikoog are residents and businesses (VVV Schiermonnikoog, 2019). However, some interviewees argue that many ‘strangers’ and visitors still manage to get a car exemption, with as a result, many cars on the streets but even more in the tiny village. To diminish the crowds and nuisance, especially in the busy summer months, cards are not allowed in the village anymore. This will not let the whole problem disappear but it might increase the livability of the already full village in the summer. The UNWTO (2018) also listed the realization of car free zones in cities/villages as a suitable solution to stop over-tourism.
5. Create more food stores Besides car nuisance, residents complained about the packed supermarket as well. The supermarket is always packed, and the owner of the supermarket has negotiated that there can only be one supermarket at the island. Perhaps the municipality can try to change/adjust this policy or law. Maybe other grocery facilities like a bakery, a butcher and greengrocer can open a shop next to each other so that all those people has more choice and less frustration.
5.3 Limitations The methodology that was developed for this study was based on the available literature concerning methods for qualitative studies and more specifically, studies that focus on residents’ attitudes towards tourism. Although I believe that this was a good basis for the current studies, some limitations were faced. In this section I will reflect on these limitations and provide recommendations for future studies.
45 Examining attitudes As argued in the theoretical framework, attitudes are often used interchangeably with perceptions, opinions, views etc. (Sharpley, 2014). I also set out a few of the many definitions of attitudes available in the literature. Although there seems to be some consensus on the meaning of this concept (positive- negative evaluation of something or someone) there is not just one definition, thereby leaving space on how to best measure the concept. Besides this, many of the studies focussing on residents attitudes of tourism, were not specific about the exact questions they asked to their participants. As visible in table 4, some scholars did provide the questions they used during their interviews, but what these questions were specifically aimed to measure was not always made explicit. For example Lepp (2007) examined resident’s attitudes towards tourism in Bogodi and describes: ‘afterwards residents were asked about their thoughts and feelings about tourism’ (2007, p. 879). How they were asked about their thoughts and feelings remains unclear. The lack of information on how scholars measure attitudes using qualitative methods caused some challenges in the development of the interview guide and execution of the interviews. The questions in the interview guide are based on the literature and the studies described in table 4, and changed to questions relevant for Schiermonnikoog. The interview guide can be improved since there was some overlap in the questions. Participants stating that they already answered a certain question, or me wanting to leave out questions during the interview indicate this. The inconsistency in the questions used in this study makes it more difficult to reproduce the study; for example at other Frisian Island where similar issues are faced.
Participants The amount and ‘type’ of participants were not selected according to plan. From reading reports it became clear that approximately 80 percent of the population of the island works in tourism (CBS, 2018), thereby I assumed that it would be possible to find people in the other 20 percent as well. Although I did found residents within this minority, the people I spoke to were also dependent on tourism, just indirectly. They were clothing shop owners, carpenters or walking therapists, but their income depends almost fully on tourists. Since almost all work on the island seems to be in tourism, examining whether residents hold different attitudes towards tourism if they are economically dependent on the sector yes or no, did not make much sense. How this factor relates to residents attitudes towards tourism could be better examined at a location with more job variety.
Limitations execution Another limitation of this thesis is the time of the year of this study. The literature on the topic states that seasonality has been found to influence people’s attitudes towards tourism (e.g. Tosun, 2002). People can be, for example happier about tourism in the summer than in the winter. Since the data for this study was collected during two weekends that were very close to each other (end of March, beginning of April), it is hard to really say something about the role of seasonality in residents’ attitudes towards tourism. Also, as I learned from the interviews, ‘the main season’ at the island starts at the 1th of April. The camping opens and more people arrive. I asked people about tourism just before this all began again. It could be possible that residents will have completely different ideas about tourism halfway or at the end of the season. Given the time available for this study, it was not possible to examine this. The sub question focussing of the factor ‘seasonality’ is therefore only based on what people mentioned to feel, think and do regarding tourism throughout the year. To get a more genuine view on the role of seasonality towards residents’ attitudes of tourism, interviews will have to be collected at multiple moments during the year.
46 Data analysis Another important issue I would like to touch-upon in the process on data analysis. In order to determine how to analyze the data I have looked into many studies, but only a few researchers describe exactly what actions they undertake between data collection and writing the report. Boeije (2010) refers to this as the ‘black box’, arguing that on of the consequence of this lack of analysis description is that work cannot be verified by others, and not much can be learned from the analysis either.
Because of the wide variety of options, I had difficulties starting to analyze over 18 hours of interview transcripts. A benefit of qualitative methods is that participants have a greater freedom of expression: the interviewee feels freer to provide authentic answers and allows revealing the complexity of ones interpretation of a phenomenon (Atieno, 2009). Although people’s complexities can be very interesting, I ended up with almost 100 pages of text, it was a big challenge to determine key themes and finding between all those stories, opinions and suggestions.
This brings me to my next point, the role of the researcher. The subjective nature of interpretivism is seen as a main disadvantage of this approach, since it leave a lot of space for bias for the side of the researcher (Boeije, 2012). Although I described my procedures, tried to stick to them the best I could, this report is still what Kvale (1996) called: ‘a social construction in which the author’s choice of writing style and literary devices provides a specific view on the subjects lived world’ (p. 253). I want to understand how residents of a special location relate to tourism. I read about it, develop questions to better understand the construct, conduct interviews and analyze the data that are generated with them. In all of these steps my influence as researcher is significant (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2000). Therefore I would be interesting to see what happens if someone else or multiple people were asked to code the interview data of this study.
Achieving sustainable tourism This studies goal was to determine residents’ attitudes towards tourism, since the literature indicated that this one of the aspects that has to be known in order to be able to achieve sustainable tourism (Edgell et al., 2008). Of course many other aspects are important in order to truly realize sustainable tourism (e.g. role of management, heritage protection, communication (CWSS, 2014). It was behind the scope of this study to examine all those different aspects. I focused on one aspect: residents’ attitudes, since it was argued to be one of the key factors in the process (e.g. Segota et al., 2017). The recommendations for policy makers provided in this thesis should be viewed in this light. If and how sustainable tourism can be achieved at Schiermonnikoog and the other Frisian Island should be further examined.
47 6. Conclusions
In this section I will provide the answers to the sub-questions that are presented in italic. The main question in answered at the end of this section.
What are the differences in attitude towards tourism impacts between certain age groups? It was found that younger residents hold more positive attitudes towards tourism than elderly people. Younger people (the ‘starters’) provided much more positive impacts of tourism than the ‘workers’ and even more than the ‘pensioners’. In this study it seems to be the case that in general the older one gets the more negative the attitudes towards tourism become, especially in the socio-cultural domain.
What are the differences in attitudes towards tourism between people that have employment/economic dependency on tourism and those who are not? Early on in this study I found that almost the entire working population works and lives of tourism, direct or indirect. I interviewed only five people that did not depend on the sector and they were all pensioners (see table 6). Since it is not easy to determine if their attitudes towards tourism impacts are based on their age or because of their lack of economic/employment dependency on tourism, this question remains unanswered.
Do residents’ attitudes towards tourism differ during the year? (seasonality) Almost all residents hold positive attitudes towards the unofficial beginning of the tourism season, and again towards the end of it. They like that it starts and they are happy when the tourism season is over again. With only one exception all residents hold negative attitudes towards the peak of the season when the island is at its busiest. Also many residents view the increasing length of the season as a negative impact of tourism. To genuinely determine if attitudes towards tourism impacts differ during the year, this study has to be executed at different times and seasons, which was beyond the scope of this research. This conclusion is therefore based on what residents mentioned about seasonality. It would be interesting to examine residents’ attitudes at the end of the peak season.
Is there a difference in attitudes towards tourism impacts towards the type/character of the visitor? I also examined whether some ‘types of people’ were preferred over others. However, in line with other studies on the topic, only a few residents revealed a small preference for a character or nationality of visitors, but at the same time they explained that it does not really matter to them. Type and/or character of visitors do not seem to have an impact on the attitudes residents hold towards tourism.
How do residents’ of Schiermonnikoog feel about tourism at their island? (affective) Almost all residents first indicated that they had no feelings about tourism development at the island. However, later on in the interview, they did mention things they were unhappy, frustrated or excited about. The majority holds negative feelings about tourism since, as they argue, there are too many tourists and they take over the roads, natural environment, village, supermarket and traditional festivals. They also expressed how nice and pleasant the winter (without many tourists) is. A small group of mainly younger people shared only positive feelings about tourism.
How do residents’ of Schiermonnikoog act because of tourism development at their island? (behavioral) The main act or behavior of the majority of residents, that seems to happen because of tourism, is to try to make a lot of money out of it. One way or another, most islanders want to, and make, a lot of money with tourism. The second thing most residents do is complaining about the amount of people on the
48 island and how this disrupts of community life and the natural environment. Then there is also the, very small, group of people that actively tries to stop the growth of tourism at the Wadden islands.
What do residents’ of Schiermonnikoog think about tourism impacts? (cognitive) The thoughts and believe residents hold about tourism at Schiermonnikoog seems to be a discourse between the things they feel and the way they act. Some residents feel it is too crowded in the supermarket, which annoys them. At the same time they open a shop to make as much money as they can from tourism. Most residents described to think of tourism as this paradoxically thing. It makes residents rich in terms of money, but not in terms of socio-cultural life and, according to some, also in environmental terms.
What are the attitudes of Schiermonnikoogs’ residents towards tourism impacts at the island they live on? The later section already hinds towards what attitudes residents of Schiermonnikoog hold towards tourism. Most residents argued to feel and experience many negative impacts of tourism such as crowing, rowdy behavior, loss of local traditions and an ever-longer season. Despite this, for many inhabitants, the attitudes towards tourism impacts are still more positive than negative because the benefits, which are mainly things they believe and think, seem to be more important then the downsides of tourism. The frustrations residents feel because of tourism are, for most of them, simply less important than the economical benefits that the sector generates.
There are a few people that form an exception to this group and who hold negative attitudes towards tourism impacts at Schiermonnikoog. This small group is actively trying to stop the growth of tourism on Schiermonnikoog and the other Wadden Islands. For them the economical benefits do not outweigh the costs of tourism. They argue that policy makers should think more about nature and socio-cultural impacts of tourism and not, as is – according to them - currently the case, only about economical gain. They describe to be part of a political game and feel not supported by governmental organizations.
Many participants argued that the current ‘tourism situation’ at Schiermonnikoog is similar to the ones at the other Wadden Islands in the Netherlands, and arguably similar to all Wadden Islands. There are more visitors on the islands for a longer period of the year, which as this study demonstrated, influences host communities’ lives in many ways. Future studies could examine whether there is sufficient support for the recommendations provided in this study. For example: are residents actually willing to limit visitor numbers, since almost all of the participants argued that there are periods were it simply is too crowded. This study had an explorative character and aimed to get a first understanding of the situation of the island. Future studies should, perhaps with mixed- or quantitative methods, try to capture the attitudes towards tourism of more residents of the island and focus on examining the carrying capacity of more specific policies related to tourism at the island. Since the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat prefers to develop policies for all three Wadden countries together, it would be useful and interesting to examine residents’ attitudes towards tourism at all 22 inhabited Wadden Islands.
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52 Annex 1 – Interview guide in English
------INTERVIEW GUIDE ENGLISH ------(Only for English readers of the thesis, a Dutch version (appendix A) will be used for data collection).
1. Introduction - I am doing research for my Master thesis at the Wageningen University - I would like to know what permanent residents of Schiermonnikoog think and feel about tourism - I want to speak to many adults to get an, as clear as possible, picture of the local view on tourism - Do you want to participate in the study by having an interview of around 30 minutes with me now? Maybe another time or day? - If yes, double check if they live on the island permanently, for at least five years and are 18 years or older (the three criteria for all participants)
2. Check participant criteria If people are willing to participate in the study I need to check whether they meet the criteria: in what age group do they fit and how dependent are they on the tourism sector. The first few interviews will be easy, but later on I will have to check if there is still ‘space’ in certain categories or that I need to search for specific categories.
3. Start interview I will start with formalities, by telling where the research is about (in general terms!) and what I will do with the data. I will also ask if I can record the interview. Since ‘those we are researched have the right to know that they are being researched and they should actively give their consent’ (Bulmer, 2008). If this is settled I will tell the participant that I am going to ask several open questions, that there are no right or wrong answers, that I would love to hear their opinions and that there is no time limit. I will start with an easy question since McNiff (2017) argued that it makes people feel more comfortable:
- Could you describe what you think when you think about Schiermonnikoog? - How do you feel when you think of the island?
4. General impacts of tourism - What comes to mind if you think about tourism on Schiermonnikoog? - In your own words, what do you see as consequences of tourism for the island Schiermonnikoog? Can add: What do tourists do with the island? Probe examples: What do you think of this? How do you feel about it? Is this the same with all visitors?
- Can you describe your thoughts about the fact that there are almost 300.000 annual visitors at Schiermonnikoog? Probe examples: How do you feel about this? Is there anything else?
5. Economic impacts of tourism - What do you see as financial/economical consequences of tourism at Schier? (if they ask what I mean with ‘economic impacts’ I will say: financially, money wise. I will stay a little vague on propose because I do not want to stir) Probe examples: What do you think of this? Can you tell me more? How do you feel about this? What do you desire?
53 6. Socio-cultural impacts of tourism - In your own words, what do you see as social consequences of tourism at the island? (if they ask what I mean with ‘social consequences’ I will say: ‘things related to others, communities’)
Probe examples: What do you think of this? How do you feel about it? Does this happen with all visitors? Is it the same year round?
- What do you see, notice as the cultural consequences of tourism at Schier? (if they ask what I mean with ‘cultural consequences’ I will say: everything that people think, do and have ideas, customs, values, activities, social behaviour’) Probe examples: How do you feel about this? Where did this happen? What do you think about it? Can you tell me more? What do you desire?
7. Environmental impacts of tourism - What do you see as environmental impacts of tourism at Schier? (if they ask what I mean with ‘environmental consequences’ I will say: things that relate to the natural world’) Probe examples: What do you desire? How do you feel about it? What do you think of this?
8. Extrinsic/Intrinsic factors (influencing perception) There will be a few questions about the factors (see table 2) found to be of influence of people’s perception of tourism. If they are not yet covered via the other questions (see the probes) I will ask these questions separately. - Type/nationality of tourists: Can you tell me something about the type of tourists that visit Schier? Probe example: What do you think of this? What do you desire/want? Do you talk to visitors about it? - Seasonality: How would you describe the tourism situation at Schier during the year? Probe examples: How do you feel about this? What do you desire? What do you think of this? - How is your contact with tourists? Probe examples: What do you want/desire? Where did this happen? How come? How do you feel about it?
9. Final & thanks - Are there for you important consequences of tourism we did not yet talk about? - How would you like to see Schiermonnikoog in the future?
I will end asking some demographics (only the things that are not yet clear or discussed during the interview): - Name (which will only be used for the interview) - Year of birth - Place of birth - Profession (ask if they can tell something about it) - How long they live on the island
Thank the interviewee, get contact details for transcript (if they want), tell them they can call me if they have questions, ask if I can call them too, and if they know a new person I can interview. I will give them a big thanks, a drink etc.
54 Annex 2: Interview guide in Dutch
------INTERVIEW FORMAT NL ------(This version will be used for data collection; the English version is visible in chapter 3).
1. Introductie - Ik doe onderzoek voor mijn master thesis aan de University van Wageningen - Ik onderzoek wat permanente bewoners van Schiermonnikoog over toerisme denken. - Ik wil graag met zoveel mogelijk volwassenen spreken om een zo duidelijk mogelijk beeld van de lokale gedachte over toerisme te krijgen. - Zou u/je mee willen doen aan mijn studie door middel van een interview van ongeveer dertig minuten? Nu? Of beter ander moment/tijd? - Zo ja, (nogmaals) controleren of de deelnemers permanente bewoners zijn, ouder dan 18 jaar (zo niet, kent u iemand die hier graag aan mee zou doen? Of vriendelijk bedankt en tot ziens)
2. Controleer criteria participanten Als mensen mee willen doen aan de studie moet ik controleren of ze aan de criteria voldoen: in welke leeftijdsgroep ze vallen en of ze wel of niet afhankelijk zijn van toerisme. Dit zal in het begin van het interview proces gemakkelijker zijn dan later, waar ik zal moeten controleren of er in bepaalde categorieën nog ruimte is of dat ik bepaalde deelnemers moet zoeken.
3. Start interview Het interview begint met formaliteiten. Ik vertel in algemene zin waar mijn studie over gaat en wat ik met de data ga doen. Ik vraag mensen hun consent zoals beschreven door Bulmer (2008) [zie hoofdstuk 3]. Als dit geregeld is zal ik de deelnemer vertellen dat ik een aantal vragen ga stellen die niet goed of fout beantwoord kunnen worden, en dat ik erg benieuwd ben naar hun mening, gedachtes, gevoelens enz. Er is (vanuit mij) geen tijdlimiet voor het interview. Ik begin met een relatief gemakkelijke vraag (volgens McNiff, 2017) is dat handig om te doen:
- Kan je beschrijven wat je denkt als je aan Schiermonnikoog denkt? - En hoe voel je je als je aan het eiland denkt?
4. Algemene impacts van toerisme - Wat komt in je op als je denkt aan toerisme op Schiermonnikoog? - In je eigen woorden, wat zie je als de gevolgen van toerisme voor het eiland Schiermonnikoog? Toevoeging: wat doen toeristen met het eiland?
Probe voorbeelden: Hoe denk je hierover? Hoe voel je je hierbij? Is dit hetzelfde bij alle bezoekers?
- Kan je je gedachten beschrijven over het feit dat er jaarlijks 300.000 bezoekers naar Schier komen? Probe voorbeelden: Wat vind je daar van? Waar verlang je naar?
5. Economische gevolgen van toerisme - Wat zie je als financiële/economische gevolgen van toerisme op Schier? (als ze vragen wat ik daarmee bedoel zeg ik: ‘financieel, money wise’ Ik blijf met opzet een beetje vaag om niet teveel te sturen) Probe voorbeelden: Hoe denk je hierover? Kan je me meer vertellen? Hoe voel je je hierover? Wanneer/waar was dit?
55 6. Sociaal-culturele gevolgen van toerisme - Kan je in je eigen woorden vertellen wat je als sociale gevolgen van toerisme ziet? (als ze vragen wat ik daarmee bedoel zeg ik: ‘dingen gerelateerd aan anderen, de gemeenschap’)
Probe voorbeelde: Wat vind je hiervan? Hoe voel je je hierover? Is dit zo bij alle bezoekers? Hoe is het gedurende het jaar?
- Wat zie je als culturele gevolgen van toerisme op Schiermonnikoog? (als ze vragen wat ik daarmee bedoel zeg ik: ‘alles wat mensen denken, doen en gedachten over hebben zoals gewoontes, waarden, activiteiten, sociale gedragingen’ Probe voorbeelden: Hoe voel je je hierover? Waar vindt dit plaats? Kan je me hier meer over vertellen? Wat verlang je? Wat zou je graag willen?
7. Gevolgen voor de natuurlijke omgeving (door toersime) - Wat zie je als gevolgen van toerisme voor de natuur? (als ze vragen wat ik daarmee bedoel zeg ik: dingen die relateren aan de natuurlijk omgeving, alles dat natuurlijk is) Probe voorbeelden: Wat zou je graag zien? Hoe voel je je hierover? En wat denk je hier van?
8. Extrinsic/Intrinsic factors (influencing perception) Er zijn een paar vragen over the ‘factoren’ (zie tabel 2) die mensen hun attitudes van toerisme schijnen te beïnvloeden. Als hier in het interview nog geen informatie naar boven gekomen is vraag ik dit hier.
- Type/nationaliteit: Kun je me iets vertellen over het ‘soort mensen’ dat Schier bezoekt? Toevoeging: is elke bezoeker hetzelfde of zijn er ook verschillen? Probe voorbeelden: Wat vindt je hiervan? Wat zijn dan belangrijke verschillen? Hoe komt dat denk je? Wat zie je graag gebeuren? - Seizoengebondenheid: Hoe zou je de toerisme situatie gedurende het jaar beschrijven? Probe voorbeelden: Is het altijd zo? Kan je beschrijven hoe het dan anders is? Hoe denk/voel je je hierover? Wat zou je graag willen? - Interactie met toeristen: Hoe is je contact met toeristen? Probe voorbeelden: Wat is veel/weinig? Wat vind je hiervan? Hoe ervaar je dit? Zou je dit anders willen? Kan je me meer vertellen?
9. Finale en formaliteiten - Zijn er belangrijke gevolgen van toerisme waar we nog niet over gepraat hebben? - Wat zou je wensen voor de toekomst van het eiland?
Ik eindig met een aantal vragen over demografische gegevens (mochten die niet al beantwoord zijn): - Naam (wordt alleen gebruikt tijdens het interview) - Geboortejaar - Geboorteplaats - Beroep (vragen of ze er iets over kunnen vertellen) - Hoe lang ze al op het eiland wonen
Bedank de geïnterviewde, contactgegevens uitwisselen van transcript (als ze dat willen), ze kunnen me bellen, ik hen ook? Super bedankt, hier is je drankje, bon, fles wijn etc. & Ciao!
56 Annex 3: Interview transcripts and analysis
Interview transcripts and the analysis of them can be requested via [email protected]
57