Determinants of Income Inequality in U.S. Nonmetropolitan Tourism- and Recreation- Dependent Communities

perspective. In tourism development research, most studies have emphasized only the economic benefits and costs from tourism development without considering the distribution of economic gains and burdens (Edington and Redman 1991). When tourism develops, there are losers and winners, and a potential for social and economic conflicts. It is often argued that local economic growth tends to worsen the local income distribution because local growth pushes up property values to a greater extent than it increases real wages or employment prospects (Bartik 1991). In reality, the number of tourists and level of total expenditures can be misleading figures concern-ing the net economic benefits that tourism actually brings to a region. A more accurate measure of tourism’s worth to the com-munity is the amount of tourist expenditures retained within the local economy, the level of employment generated, and th