Environmental and Community Stability of a Mountain Destination: An Analysis of Residents’ Perception

Dunja Demirović, Milan Radovanović, Marko D. Petrović, Marija Cimbaljević, Nikola Vuksanović and Darko Vuković ()
Additional contact information
Dunja Demirović: Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovića 3, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia
Milan Radovanović: Geographical Institute “Jovan Cvijić” SASA, Djure Jakšića 9, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
Marko D. Petrović: Geographical Institute “Jovan Cvijić” SASA, Djure Jakšića 9, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
Marija Cimbaljević: Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovića 3, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia
Nikola Vuksanović: Department of Hospitality, Higher Education School for Management and Business Communication, Mitropolita Stratimirovića 110, 21205 Sremski Karlovci, Serbia

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: This study aims to explore the use of the social-ecological system (SES) in tourism of a mountain area. Authors examined residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts on four SES aspects: ecosystems, local knowledge, people and technology and property rights institutions. The aim is to find area that will be a “common ground” for community and area that can be a source of conflict and will require additional work to solve the differences. Second objective was to examine residents’ perception towards future local development tourism policies (winter tourism, seasonality and environment and culture) and how those policies can affect natural, socio-economic and cultural aspects of mountain area. Residents’ perceptions of sustainable tourism development potential, perceived tourism impacts, analysis of community attachment and employment sector of stakeholder were involved in this study. The authors applied the Q-methodology, as one SES-allied approach, in a small mountain community of Kopaonik, the Republic of Serbia. The results revealed that residents’ agreement/disagreement is connected with two aspects: ecosystem and property rights and that ecosystem can be significantly influenced by all three development policies. Findings suggest that development of future natural conservation plans and new cultural attractions can have positive effects on all parts of social-ecological system. Some practical implications of those findings for tourism planning and development are also discussed.

Keywords: sustainable ecology; sustainable tourism; social-ecological system; residents’ perception; tourism impact; tourism policies; sustainability; mountain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/1/70/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/1/70/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2017:i:1:p:70-:d:124752

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().