امکانات طبیعی، جهانگردی و توزیع درآمد

Understanding the distributional mechanisms of aggregate amenity-led economic growth is a necessary prerequisite to informed rural tourism planning. This applied study develops an empirical county-level model for the US lake states that incorporates five alternative natural amenity types and other growth variables to explain the distribution of income as measured by Gini coefficients. Results suggest that certain types of natural amenities are clearly related to the distribution of income. This extends earlier work which hypothesized that amenity-based development creates a “hollowing out” of the income classes. Analyses of tourism impacts from the sole standpoint of employment and income growth neglect to account for key components of rural development structure.

While many rural communities are experiencing depopulation and economic decline, others are experiencing rapid in-migration and significant economic growth. The importance of natural amenities in explaining rural growth patterns is becoming widely accepted within the rural development literature (Isserman, 2001, OECD, 1999 and Power, 1988). Both descriptive analysis (McGranahan 1999) and more advanced statistical modeling approaches (Deller, Tsai, Marcouiller and English 2001) have consistently found that rural areas endowed with natural and built amenities—such as scenic beauty, recreational sites, and tourism attributes—experience higher rates of economic growth than the US average. These findings of economic growth differentials reflect important transitional stages of rural economies. Taken at face value, the empirical work suggests that amenity-rich communities without extensive development should strategically pursue mass tourism for rapid aggregate economic growth. For planning and public policy, this boosterism inference runs counter to those who argue that tourism development is inferior to traditional modes of economic growth, because of the predominance of low-wage employment opportunities in these businesses and because of class issues associated with service type jobs (Ashworth, 1992, Hall, 2000, Marcouiller, 1997, Rothman, 1998, Smith, 1989 and Williams and Shaw, 1988). In sum, growing concern over such reliance focuses on the unequal distribution of benefits and on the tendency for tourism to create a “hollowing out” of the income distribution (Leatherman and Marcouiller, 1996, Leatherman and Marcouiller, 1999 and Wagner, 1997). The policy analysis dilemma is that aggregate measures of economic growth mask key development characteristics of rural regions. There is a strong need for empirical work that focuses on specific indicators of development rather than on simplistic and myopic measures of economic growth, such as changes in employment and aggregate income levels. Studies that address issues of distributional implications, transitions in economic structure, and the role of technology offer a clearer focus on regional development indicators. In particular, looking at growth without assessing distributional effects of change overlooks the strong developmental trend of increased intra-regional income inequality. Indeed, assessing the distributional aspects of economic growth provides the real-world problem set of how tourism and other amenity-driven developments affect the lives and livelihoods of rural populations. Rising American income inequality has been widely reported in two general dimensions. The first dimension of inequality is disparity among regions, especially the persistent income gaps between urban and rural economies (Hansen, 1995 and Renkow, 1996). The second dimension is a trend of an aggregate increase in family income inequality regardless of geographic location. The long-term trend of income inequality (as measured using a Gini coefficient) in the United States is shown in Figure 1. The Gini coefficient is based on the Lorenz curve that shows the relationship between the cumulative percentage of total income within an economy and the cumulative percentage of income received when units are arranged in ascending order according to income. The Gini coefficient ranges from 0, indicating perfect equality, to 1, indicating perfect inequality. In reference to Figure 1, it is important to note that income inequality for US family income, measured by the Gini coefficient, has persistently risen from 0.35 in 1970 to 0.365 in 1980, and from 0.396 in 1990 to 0.44 in 1997 (Cline, 1997, Karoly, 1996, Morrill, 2000, Weicher, 1997 and Weiner and Monto, 1998).

Academic arguments examining the course of contemporary rural development and the increasing reliance on tourism focus on the importance of natural amenities in concert with infrastructure, technology, and the transition in use of rural lands. A presentation of the explanatory factors leading to rural development, regional migration, and the development of rural tourism is analytically complex yet critically important in promulgating contemporary and innovative policies that affect the rural condition and serve as the basis for 21st century rural planning practice. Much of the existing theory and empirical literature on rural economic change can be easily criticized as overly aggregate in its conceptualization, overly reliant on aggregate measures of growth, and generally devoid of developmental indicators. Indeed, aggregate measures of economic growth are insufficient mechanisms upon which to assess the efficacy of rural economic change. There is a strong need for theoretically consistent empirical analysis that goes beyond aggregate measures of economic growth to understand more fully key developmental attributes of regional change. Income distribution is one of these more comprehensive metrics of development. The applied research presented in this manuscript provides a conceptual construct within which the developmental aspects of natural amenities and tourism can be better understood through a review of the relevant literature and an empirical assessment of the changing distributional patterns of income across the US lake states. Results suggest that natural amenities (in particular water-based resources) provide key explanatory factors related to the distribution of income. In this study, a variant of new growth theory was applied to test the hypothesis that natural amenities were key explanatory variables involved in the distribution of economic growth. As technology transforms economic distance, sense-of-place with respect to work and pleasure increasingly focuses on the presence of natural amenities and the reliance on tourism as an economic mainstay. The economic transformation of traditionally rural communities represents key challenges to development planning. As a result of economic restructuring and general increases in leisure tourism, many rural regions have employed this industry as an important component of their overall economic development strategy without thorough assessment (Frederick, 1993 and Marcouiller, 1997). Tourism is often preconceived as a viable economic development alternative for rural regions that have limited economic bases (Brown and Hall, 2000 and Marcouiller and Deller, 1996). Development policy based solely on aggregate growth is naïve and overlooks important distributional attributes associated with amenities and touristic activity. From a public policy perspective, it is important to recognize that distributional issues have taken a back seat to issues of growth and a more “hands off” approach to government intervention during the past two decades (Leigh 1995:94). Contemporary politics has emphasized market-based solutions as approaches to improving individual welfare; and, more responsibility has shifted to state, provincial, and local governments to provide social services. Public policy with respect to tourism reflects these changes with the widespread use of a “boosterism” approach to planning that overlooks key community attributes required for more integrative and collaborative planning approaches (Getz and Jamal, 1994, Hall, 2000, Hall and Jenkins, 1995, Marcouiller, 1997 and Murphy, 1985). The contemporary American public policy fascination with promoting regions for increased tourism rests on a preconception that this industry is automatically beneficial to the economic development of communities it affects; the preconception that it is a developmental panacea rules. It is suggested that this preconception is better viewed as an empirical question that is indeed significant, complex, and rarely addressed in contemporary public policy analysis. In addition to continued empirical work on the distributional implications of amenities and tourism, there is clearly a need for further research on several related fronts. First, there is a need for more creative theoretical justifications of the role of amenities in affecting regional economic change and for research that more clearly specifies the latent input structure characterizing tourism’s supply-side. Second, there is a need for better policy analysis research to internalize more fully key amenity-related externalities. It is important to note that the provision of amenities is not a costless endeavor and typically rests on public agencies and local units of government for management inputs. The incorporation of costs involved in providing common-pool resources into private market-based decision-making can allow more socially efficient outcomes to be generated and can alleviate the private free-riding that currently characterizes tourism’s production process. Finally, there is a continual need for further research into community-oriented and integrative tourism planning; this takes on both thematic and process elements. Incorporating wider stakeholder involvement in the planning process while developing a more complete understanding of the implications of tourism on local communities will inevitably lead to developing a research-based planning approach that addresses key people-oriented needs—relevant not only for the US lake states but also for regional planning efforts worldwide.■A