Quality-of-Life Community Indicators for Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management

While community quality-of-life indicators are gaining much needed attention in both scholarly work and practice, their application in the areas of parks, recreation and tourism management are not as well known. The applicability of indicator systems for natural resource and natural resource area management within the parks and recreation arena is very high, including urban parks and recreation programs and their influence on quality of life.

Tourism is also an area that needs much more work in terms of assessing impacts as well as developing indicators for gauging progress in the long term. All three areas are an integrated discipline and most programs throughout the developed world are housed co-jointly. There are several researchers across the globe who are conducting innovative work in these areas. The editors feel that a volume on the topic will spur additional interests as well as serve to lead the research efforts.

Megha Budruk is an Associate Professor in the Parks and Recreation Program at the School of Community Resources & Development, Arizona State University.  Her primary research interests include human relationships with natural settings, specifically- place attachment and sense of place.  Other research interests include crowding and indicator-based social carrying capacity, beneficial outcomes of natural resource recreation, and visitor impacts, experience and management at natural and cultural resource settings such as parks, protected areas, and cultural monuments.

Rhonda Phillips is Professor and Director of the School of Community Resources and Development, Arizona State University. Her research and practice speciality has focused on community well-being including work with arts and tourism-based development and economic development planning. She is the Editor of Community Development: Journal of the Community Development Society.