The citizen within: positioning local residents for sustainable tourism

Abstract

Persistent limitations to the industry-centric and resident-centric approaches to tourism highlight the need for innovation to achieve sustainability and resilience. Advantages of positioning and ultimately mobilizing destination residents as citizens, as per evolving citizenship theory, include conferrals of duties and rights that synthesize the two approaches and designate appropriate virtues and behaviors across norms of participation, autonomy, commitment to social order, and solidarity. Citizenship, additionally, is an existing status which bestows member equality, and has evolved to include an engagement-based dimension effective for addressing specific topics such as tourism sustainability. We integrate citizenship rights, duties, virtues and behaviors into the enlightened mass tourism framework to create a compelling basis for attaining sustainable and resilient tourism which complements ongoing dominant narratives of “resident” or “community.” Future studies should consider issues associated with problematic or qualified citizenship, the status of tourists, and incorporating resilience.