Finding new ways to measure the local sustainability of rural tourism

Tourism affects local populations differently in counties across the U.S., but measuring these effects may now be easier thanks to a new tool developed as part of a study by researchers at Penn State. For the study, published in the journal Tourism Economics, the researchers developed a sustainability index to assess how tourism affects counties according to a number of factors that measure the areas' economic, social and environmental well-being. They found that counties relying heavily on tourism varied widely in their ability to keep it from overwhelming local resources, with no destination performing well on every dimension.