Content area
Full Text
Introduction
The subject of carrying capacity in a leisure context has a long history: in the sixteenth century the problem of overuse of resources was noted:
“But now the sport is marred, And Wot ye why?
Fishes decrease, For Fishers multiply” (Anonymous, 1598, cited in Brougham, 1969).Yet little has changed over the centuries and the problems stemming from too many users/visitors have only grown larger and more critical. Complaints about excessive numbers of visitors to tourist destinations and the undesired (by some residents and initial tourists) changes resulting were noted in the nineteenth century (Butler, 2006) and echoed by Young (1973), but the problems have continued to grow with increasing tourist numbers.
Past perspective
Carrying capacity research has shown periods of both intense academic study and also near total academic rejection over the past half century (Butler, 1997) The issues of excessive numbers foreseen in Crisis in Outdoor Recreation (Clawson, 1959) have been widely experienced for some time and the problems of environmental impacts arising from overuse noted by Darling and Eichorn (1966) in the US national parks have now become relevant in many other recreation and tourism destinations. Wider general interest in limits and carrying capacity arose in the 1960s, as shown by Carson (1962), Hardin (1966) and, Meadows et al. (1972), in relation to concerns over environmental impacts and quality of life. In the context of tourism and carrying capacity the most relevant research also began in this period and has been discussed earlier at some length (Butler, 1997) and a brief summary is all that is needed here. The seminal work was undertaken by researchers of the US Forest Service in the 1960s. Lime, Lucas, Stankey and Wagar amongst others showed that it was possible to establish limits of tolerance to crowding and levels of use amongst users of destination areas. The topic of carrying capacity was recorded as the fourth most important topic in leisure and recreation research (Jackson and Burton, 1989, p. 17). However, the initial research was undertaken in areas which had no resident population, and most of the respondents in these studies were homogenous...