Sociocultural Impact Models

Humanity’s curious and mobile nature has evolved throughout history, preparing the stage for mobility of over one billion people during the early 2000s. As the number of visitors, destinations, enterprises, and institutions participating in tourism has increased, the attention of researchers moved on its impacts. Earlier studies concentrated more on the economic and environmental impacts. The continuous growth of tourism has resulted in various interactions between the social and cultural units of societies. In fact, tourism scholars try to shed light on the qualitative and sociocultural dimensions of the phenomenon since the 1970s. This chapter tackles sociocultural impact models that try to understand how tourism changes, shapes, defines, and remakes societies and their cultures. These models are new and immature.