The complexities of tourism and regeneration: the case of the 2012 Olympic Games

Regeneration proposals typically seek to use a range of physical, economic and social initiatives to tackle inequality and improve areas. Often they attempt to change the image of places, making them more attractive to tourists, investors, and residents. The role of tourism in these regeneration processes is complex and contested. Tourism elements are often not well understood by decision-makers and sometimes create tensions with wider social regeneration aspirations. Using concepts from complexity theory, this paper interrogates the relationship between tourism and wider regeneration aspirations connected with the 2012 Olympic Games. It uses complexity theory to explore the context within which policies are developed, and the relationships between different policy initiatives. Both are highly complex, constantly evolving and sometimes ambiguous. It argues complexity concepts might be used to help to develop deeper understanding of the relationships between tourism and regeneration.

How does a house remember? heritage-ising return migration in an Indonesian-Chinese house museum in Guangdong, PRC

This paper is an attempt to integrate heritage and museum studies through exploring the complex relationship between the materiality of architecture and social memories with a house museum of return migration in Guangdong, PRC as a case study. It unveils that the ongoing process of memory is intrinsically intertwined with spatial and temporal dimensions of the physical dwelling and built environment and the wider social-historical context and power relations shaping them. I argue that it is the house as ‘object of exhibit’ just as much as the exhibits inside the house that materialises the turbulent and traumatic migratory experience of Returned Overseas Chinese, embodies their memories and exposes the contested nature of museumification. By looking at the socially and geographically marginalised dwelling of return migrants, the house draws people’s attention to the often neglected importance of conceptual periphery in re-theorising what is often assumed to be the core of heritage value. It points to the necessity to integrate displaced, diasporic, transnational subjects to heritage and museum studies that have been traditionally framed within national and territorial boundaries.

Examining Chinese Tourists’ Nature-based Tourism Participantion Behavior: Incorporating Environmental Concern into a Constraint-Negotiation Modela

Finding the balance between economic development and preservation of the natural environment is a challenging yet important task. This is a particularly pressing issue in the case of China, as it is the largest and fastest-growing market for tourism. The purpose of this research is to examine Chinese tourists’ participation in nature-based, tourism activities by incorporating tourists’ environmental concern, measured by a revised New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale, into a tourism constraint-negotiation model. The responses of 409 Chinese tourists show environmental concern will positively affect tourists’ motivation, which, in turn, will affect their negotiation strategy and ultimately their participation behavior. The theoretical and managerial implications of this study are discussed in the context of the tourism literature.