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This lead article introduces the double special issue dedicated to methodological and theoretical advancements in social impacts of tourism research. We begin by providing an overview of five key developmental stages of research within this area: Definitions, typologies, and conceptual model development; the advent of case study-based, atheoretical empirical inquiry; scale design, development, and testing; further scale development/refinement and theoretical application; and theoretical model development and testing. Brief evolutionary histories of the methodological and theoretical advancements of research dedicated to social impacts of tourism are then discussed. This includes a review of the most pertinent predictor variables (along with a visual display of each and key studies) in explaining residents’ perceptions of social impacts of tourism and a thorough review of most frequently used theoretical frameworks. Following this, brief synopses of the articles are provided along with key themes (e.g. resident-tourist relationships, social impacts and residents’ attitudes, residents’ empowerment, overtourism, and methodologies) and salient points of each work. In closing, we suggest numerous lines of inquiry that will continue to advance research into social impacts of tourism. Though these studies were undertaken prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, we emphasize that future work should be designed with the pandemic in mind. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Given the expediency with which some U.S. governors have reopened their states to tourists, this research focuses on residents' responses to pro-tourism behaviour within the State of Georgia-one such state where contentious perspectives have been voiced. This work tests a social exchange model which includes four potential predictors of residents' pro-tourism behaviour. Eight of the 11 proposed model hypotheses were supported. Though perceived risk of COVID-19 was not a significant predictor, perceived positive and negative tourism impacts were the strongest. Local and state destination marketing organizations will be best served in applying our findings in efforts to continually monitor residents' perspectives as more individuals receive the COVID-19 vaccination. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This is the Author’s Original Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism on 16 March 2020, available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1738444. In light of the recent conflicts in Carthage over land use, cultural heritage preservation, and sustainable tourism, this work utilized a value-belief-norm (VBN) theoretical framework to consider psychological antecedents of residents’ behavioral intentions to support cultural heritage tourism. As such, personal values, cultural worldview, awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, and subjective norms were considered antecedents of intentions to support cultural heritage tourism. Data were collected from 475 Carthage residents in nine neighborhoods adjacent to UNESCO World Heritage Sites using an on-site self-administered questionnaire. The proposed model was assessed through confirmatory factor analysis (to demonstrate sound psychometric properties across all 11 factors within the model), followed by structural equation modelling. Overall, 15 of the 19 proposed hypotheses were supported, ultimately contributing to 28% of the variance explained in residents’ behavioral intentions to support cultural heritage tourism. This work not only provides support for the utilization of the VBN model within the context of cultural heritage tourism, it also deepens our understanding of the theoretical framework through the inclusion of the multi-dimensional construct cultural worldview.