10.1177/0047287504265501 ARTICLEAUGUST 2004JOURNAL OF TRAVEL RESEARCH Factions and Enclaves: Small Towns and Socially Unsustainable Tourism Development

Pressured by the decline of extractive industries and ag-riculture, many small towns are trying to acquire a share of the tourism industry. While some communities decide to de-velop tourism from within their towns, often rural places turn to large-scale privately owned tourism enterprises to act as engines of economic development. While many studies have examined how tourism can have negative social impacts in rural communities, few studies detail how rural communi-ties ’ attitudes toward tourism can suffer when locals feel alienated from planning/development decisions. In this study, the authors examined data from participant observa-tion and semistructured interviews in Williams, Arizona, to determine whether changes in community attitudes toward tourism followed patterns suggested by the established theo-retical models of social carrying capacity and community adaptation to a social disruption. We found that Williams is a case where the fast pace of tourism development causes community attitudes toward tourism to decline over time