Community Responses to Tourism and Crime

Tourism is known to bring about positive and negative changes to destinations. This paper explores how tourism business owners’ lives and residents within the tourism area of an English seaside resort respond in their behaviour as a consequence of tourism-related crime and their fear of such crimes. Through a mixture of primary and secondary data analysis it is clear that crime in the case study area increases during the tourism season. The results suggested that these are changes in behaviour made by parking in different locations; socialising differently; bypassing specific streets at night; and carrying out additional security checks in the home. Perceptions of the destination and of criminal activity were found to vary in relation to occupation and involvement with the tourism industry, and there were associations with socio-demographic variables and the level of attachment to the town.