FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO AND MEDIATING IMPACTS
The impacts of tourism can be viewed as arising from the type or
types of tourism involved, the characteristics of the communities in
which tourism is taking place, and the nature of resident-visitor
encounters. Furthermore, investigations of tourism cycles suggest
that impacts in a destination area are likely to change with time as
the nature of tourists, the community and resident-visitor interactions
also change (Butler 1980). Furthermore, much change associ-ated with tourism may be cumulative as a number of small enterprises
develop in sequence and in close proximity, each having a
minor impact when viewed alone, but together having far-reaching
consequences. Cumulative impact assessment is a challenging topic
which is beginning to attract the attention of those charged with
conducting and evaluating impact assessments, although it has yet
to receive much recognition in the tourism literature (Shoemaker
1994).
While much work has documented the impacts of tourism, often
under economic, environmental and socio-cultural headings
(Mathieson and Wall 1982), few authors have taken the trouble to
document adequately the types of tourism, the community characteristics,
or the nature of host-guest encounters which give rise to
these impacts. In fact, it would be worthwhile to review the tourism
impacts literature in an attempt to establish more precisely the
contexts in which authors have documented specific impacts. Failure
to provide such information or to take note of it adequately has
resulted in: