Does tourism really affect happiness of residents? An evidence from Turkey

Abstract

Happiness is defined as state of being happy. And happy is defined feeling or showing pleasure or contentment in Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 2017). Depending on this definiton main aim of every humanbeing is to be happy and reach happiness. In tourism context people tend to find positive feelings mainly during their holiday travel (Lohman ve Bloom, 2015) and tourist flow to a destination brings a number of positive impacts. These impacts can contribute well-being and happiness of residents. But excessive tourism development in a tourism area sometimes irritate residents (Doxey, 1975) and negatively effects well-being and happiness of residence. Happiness in tourism content is a multifaceted phenomenon. Participating to tourism activities as a tourist has positive effects on subjective well-being, personal health, relaxation, mental well-being (Rubenstein, 1980; Hunter-Jones, 2003). In addition to that numerous destinations utilize tourism as a tool to increase the well-being of residents (Rivera, Croes and Lee, 2016). Although having some possitive effects on happiness of tourists and residents, tourism can create unhappiness of both parties. For example, if a tourist face an unexpected and poor experience in a destination and residents face intensive negative effects of tourism, the tourism development in a destination becomes a nightmare. In this paper, it was tried to examine the relationship between number of tourist arrivals and happiness of residents. For this purpose, secondary data sources was employed. Theese data sources belong to Turkish Statictical Institute (TSI) and Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT). There are some variables will be used in the research. These are Life Satisfaction Survey (LSS) and Accommodation Statistics (AS) of Turkey. The variable will be compare provience based. The findings of the research will answer the question does tourism really effect happiness of residents. If not, this answer will bring new research question about what are the reasons?