Tourist season and residents' life satisfaction: Empirical evidence from a longitudinal design in a Mediterranean destination

The aim of this paper is to confirm or confute the hypothesis that residents' attitudes to tourism and individuals' overall satisfaction vary with tourist development and to determine whether changes are long lasting or vanish with the tourist season. A longitudinal design based on a three-step survey (before, peak, and after tourist seasons) was conducted for a destination where tourism is a major economic activity. The results demonstrate that residents' attitudes to tourism change over time and residents' happiness and satisfaction with life domains are endangered by tourism. They also show a certain recovery capacity after the “perturbation.”