Ferari PHD Dissertation Proposal

“The Rise and Fall of Overtourism”
Sebastian Ferrari, MSc.
Modul University Vienna
PhD Proposal Manuscript
Doctoral Supervisors:
Prof. Dr. Josef A. Mazanec
Prof. Dr. Karl Wöber
Author Note:
The student´s PhD has been funded by the Vienna Tourist Board.
Table of Contents
1 Research Questions ..................................................................................................... 9
2 Overtourism .............................................................................................................. 13
2.1 Dictionary Entries ............................................................................................. 13
2.2 Industry Reports ................................................................................................ 14
2.3 Academic Sources ............................................................................................. 14
2.4 TourMIS 2019 ................................................................................................... 16
2.5 Final Remarks ................................................................................................... 18
3 Literature ................................................................................................................... 20
3.1 Mass Media ....................................................................................................... 20
3.1.1 Agenda-Setting ...................................................................................................................... 20
3.1.2 Framing ................................................................................................................................. 25
3.1.3 Mass Media in Tourism Research ......................................................................................... 28
3.2 Tourism and Leisure ......................................................................................... 29
3.2.1 Historical Excursus ............................................................................................................... 30
3.2.2 Resident Attitudes / Tourism Impacts ................................................................................... 31
3.2.3 (Tourism) Carrying Capacity ................................................................................................ 37
3.3 Overtourism Measurement................................................................................ 43
3.3.1 State of the Art ...................................................................................................................... 43
4 Methodology ............................................................................................................. 49
5 Empirical Part ........................................................................................................... 51
5.1 Study I ............................................................................................................... 51
5.1.1 Rationale for this Study ......................................................................................................... 51
5.1.2 Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 53
5.1.3 Data Collection...................................................................................................................... 61
5.1.4 Preliminary Results ............................................................................................................... 62
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5.1.5 Limitations ............................................................................................................................ 67
5.2 Study II.............................................................................................................. 68
5.2.2 Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 71
5.2.3 Data Collection...................................................................................................................... 73
5.2.5 Limitations ............................................................................................................................ 80
5.3 Study III ............................................................................................................ 81
5.3.2 Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 91
5.3.3 Data Collection...................................................................................................................... 94
5.3.5 Limitations ............................................................................................................................ 97
6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 98
7 References ................................................................................................................. 99
8 Appendices .............................................................................................................. 128
8.1 Appendix 1 ...................................................................................................... 128
8.2 Appendix 2 ...................................................................................................... 128
8.3 Appendix 3 ...................................................................................................... 129
8.4 Appendix 4 ...................................................................................................... 129
8.5 Appendix 5 ...................................................................................................... 130
8.6 Appendix 6 ...................................................................................................... 131
8.7 Appendix 7 ...................................................................................................... 132
8.8 Appendix 8 ...................................................................................................... 132
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Dissertation Structure // Overtourism History................................................................11
Figure 2: Knowledge throughout Education (Might, 2010) ........................................................ 12
Figure 3: Word Cloud (n=24)........................................................................................................ 16
Figure 4: Respondents´ (Dis-)Agreement (n=22-23).................................................................... 17
Figure 5: Triangular Relationship Based on Lippmann (1922) .................................................... 21
Figure 6: Plato´s Cave................................................................................................................... 22
Figure 7: Frame-Changing Model (Chyi & McCombs, 2004, p. 25) .......................................... 24
Figure 8: Framing - A Drawing from the Internet......................................................................... 25
Figure 9: Agenda-Setting and Framing Theory (McCombs & Ghanem, 2001, p. 71) ................ 27
Figure 10 : Publications about Resident Attitudes ........................................................................ 32
Figure 11: Four Phases (Deery et al., 2012, p. 65) ....................................................................... 32
Figure 12: Spectrum of Visitor-Resident Interaction (Sharpley, 2014, p. 39) ............................. 34
Figure 13: Publications about Carrying Capacity ......................................................................... 37
Figure 14: (Non-)Linear Relations between Use and Impact (McCool & Lime, 2001, p. 375) .. 40
Figure 15: Crowding Scale (Neuts & Nijkamp, 2012, p. 2140) ................................................. 42
Figure 16: Publications about Overtourism Measurement ........................................................... 44
Figure 17: Topic Modeling (Blei, 2012, p. 78) ............................................................................ 54
Figure 18: Structural Topic Modeling (Schmiedel et al., 2019, p. 945) ...................................... 56
Figure 19: Computational Grounded Theory Adapted from Nelson (2020, p. 14)....................... 60
Figure 20: News Coverage over Time 2017 - 2020 (n = 602) ...................................................... 63
Figure 21: Most frequently mentioned locations (n = 602) ......................................................... 65
Figure 22: PRISMA Flow Diagram (Moher et al., 2009) ............................................................. 75
Figure 23: Co-Authorship Network .............................................................................................. 76
Figure 24: Co-Occurrence Graph of Author Keywords ................................................................ 77
Figure 25: Co-Citation Network ................................................................................................... 79
Figure 26: Arrivals and Overnights by Month in 2019 ................................................................. 84
Figure 27: Box Map - Airbnbs per km2 by District (14th Jan 2020) ............................................. 88
Figure 28: Box Map – Airbnbs per ha by Census District (14th January 2020) ............................ 89
Figure 29: Number of Responses by District in 2019 (n=3.657) .................................................. 91
Figure 30: Analysis Workflow ...................................................................................................... 93
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Figure 31: Responses by Quarters and Years ................................................................................ 94
Figure 32: Average Liking of the City without Tourism ............................................................... 95
Figure 33: Sample BTM ............................................................................................................... 96
Figure 34: Potential Relationships between Crowding and Satisfaction (Wagar, 1964, p. 7) .... 128
Figure 35: Postcard with Sample Text ........................................................................................ 132
Figure 36: Postcard without Sample Text ................................................................................... 133
List of Tables
Table 1: Dictionary Definitions .................................................................................................... 13
Table 2: Seminal Works ................................................................................................................ 31
Table 3: Present vs Previous Studies ............................................................................................ 52
Table 4: Selected Newspapers ...................................................................................................... 61
Table 5: Present vs Previous Studies ............................................................................................ 70
Table 6: Indicators by Category .................................................................................................... 81
Table 7: Indicators by District....................................................................................................... 87
Table 8: Reviews about Residents Attitudes and Tourism Impacts, Aspects .............................. 128
Table 9: Distribution of News Articles (n=602) ......................................................................... 129
Table 10: Junk Words .................................................................................................................. 129
Table 11: Indicators for the City of Vienna, 2009-2019 ............................................................. 130
Table 12: Indicators on District Level ........................................................................................ 131
List of Equations
Equation 1: Nominalist Definition (Popper, 1945, p. 9) .............................................................. 18
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List of Abbreviations
AIEST International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism
APA American Psychological Association
CEO Chief Executive Officer
Covid-19 Coronavirus disease 2019
CTM Correlated Topic Model
DOI Digital Object Identifier
DTM Dynamic Topic Model
LAC Limits of Acceptable Change
LDA Latent Dirichlet Allocation
NAS Network Agenda-Setting Model
NUTS Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics
SET Social Exchange Theory
STM Structural Topic Model
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNWTO United Nations World Tourism Organization
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“When there's an elephant in the room, introduce him.”
(Randy Pausch)
F
ollowing the advice by Prof. Pausch, the author would like to address the elephant
in the room right at the outset. As a matter of fact, two elephants need introduction
in this case. The first one relates to the content of this dissertation. Indeed, one
may question the significance of a dissertation about “overtourism” in the middle of a pandemic.
Last year, the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) virtually annihilated the global tourism
industry. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) (2021), international tourist
arrivals decreased by 73.9% compared to the previous year. Yet, being at rock bottom can be either
a blessing or a curse. As Martin Luther King once said, “Every crisis has both its dangers and its
opportunities. Each can spell either salvation or doom.” On the one hand, there are several
initiatives to rebuild tourism in a more sustainable manner. Indeed, next to top-down impulses
from institutions in the public sector, such as the UNWTO, there have been bottom-up initiatives
by companies in the private sector, such as 'Tourism Declares'. On the other hand, the behaviour
of people tames one's hopes for a better tomorrow. For instance, Westcott and Culver (2020)
reported huge crowds at various places in China. Similarly, Morris (2020) reported huge crowds
at various beaches in the United Kingdom. Time will show which path tourism will take when
rising from its ashes. Be that as it will, it is immaterial to the significance of this dissertation. To
be sure, a return to business-as-usual would make the findings of this dissertation 'hotter'. However,
a sustainable rebirth of tourism would by no means belittle knowledge of how a tourism-related
phenomenon has been depicted in the news, of how useful the revival of old issues has been in
academia, or of how locals experience their destination without tourism. In other words, the
findings of the research conducted within the framework of this dissertation will be valuable either
way.
The second elephant in the room relates to the format of this dissertation. Indeed, the
author´s decision to write a monograph, as opposed to publishing three articles, might be regarded
as swimming against the stream. After all, the saying “publish or perish” is not without its reasons.
Having said that, the author decided to write a monograph for two reasons. First, this format
enables him to deal with the subject matter in depth. The detailed discussion of topic modeling
will be an example thereof (pp. 54-61). Also, a monograph allows a few unrequired - yet insightful
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- digressions, such as the one about the “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato (pp. 22-23). Second, the
flowery writing style of the author fits this format better, as it is not subject to some of the
guidelines imposed by journals, such as word counts and the like. This, in turn, may come to the
advantage of the reader too, as she or he may find the read more entertaining this way.
This manuscript is structured as follows. The first section will introduce the three research
questions addressed in this dissertation and highlight their significance. The second part will
discuss the key concept of this research – that is, “overtourism”. The third section will review the
scholarly literature that lays the foundation for the three empirical studies conducted within the
framework of this project. The fifth part will introduce their methodology – albeit only briefly, as
each study will then be discussed in depth in the sixth section. Here, the author will also present a
few sample analyses to whet the reader´s appetite for the final dissertation.
Finally, the author would like to point out that he cited all sources to the best of his
knowledge according to the 7th edition of the manual of the American Psychological Association
(APA) (2020). Specifically, the software “Citavi” (Swiss Academic Software GmbH, 2021) has
been used for reference management.
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1 Research Questions
“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts”

(Aristotle)
Overtourism has made the headlines in the last few years. Indeed, journalists have
diligently reported about the occurrence of this phenomenon, particularly in Europe (e.g. Coldwell,
2017; Henley, 2020). In point of fact, news media is the birthplace of overtourism. Indeed, this
word was accidently created by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the news outlet 'Skift' (Ali,
2018), which later trademarked it (Skift, Inc., 2018). Considering the origins of overtourism, it
comes as a surprise that only a handful of studies have dealt with its depiction in the news (Clark
& Nyaupane, 2020; Pasquinelli & Trunfio, 2020; Phi, 2020). This, in turn, begs the question: “How
has overtourism been portrayed in news media?” Using structural topic modeling (Roberts et al.,
2014) as a point of departure rather than one of arrival in answering this question fits into the
framework of Computational Grounded Theory proposed by Nelson (2020). In spite of being only
a drop in the ocean, this approach makes a step forward in overcoming the long-standing "artificial
dichotomy of inductive versus deductive reasoning" (Mazanec, 2009, p. 320). Moreover, given the
role of news media in image formation (Gartner, 1994) and destination selection (Stepchenkova &
Eales, 2011), knowledge of how a tourism-related phenomenon has been portrayed in newspapers
might be of interest to Destination Management Organizations (DMOs). In fact, this retrospective
analysis could provide them with knowledge that allows them to step in and mould the public
discourse on other occasions in the future.
Following its debut in the news, overtourism then transitioned to academia. Koens et al.
(2018) ascribe the rapid uptake of this term by the scholarly community more to its currency than
to its meaning. In fact, to date, there is no universally valid definition of “overtourism” (Avond et
al., 2019; Capocchi et al., 2019; Capocchi et al., 2020; Nepal & Nepal, 2019). Interestingly, there
has been a heated debate about this term in the academic community. By now, the general
consensus seems to be that overtourism is indeed “old wine in new bottles” (Dredge, 2017). In this
regard, Perkumienė and Pranskūnienė (2019) and Capocchi et al. (2020) differentiated between
the word and the issue, and maintained that although the former has only appeared recently the
latter actually dates back a long time. Koens et al. (2018) and Benner (2020) considered this word
a hypernym for the unfavourable effects of tourism. Milano, Novelli, and Cheer (2019b) argued
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that this word denotes “a renewed interest in the adverse impacts of tourism” (Milano, Novelli, &
Cheer, 2019b, p. 355). This, in turn, raises the question of what the added value of reigniting such
long-standing discussion is. In other words: “How useful has research on overtourism been?”
Establishing the usefulness of this research stream fulfils "the significant need for every mature
field of knowledge to understand itself" (Tribe & Liburd, 2016, p. 44). Even though it would
beyond doubt be premature to consider research on overtourism as such, an interim assessment of
this interdisciplinary field of inquiry is worthwhile. In fact, the temporary timeout imposed by the
outbreak of Covid-19 might just be the proverbial “calm before the storm” to be exploited for
evaluating scholarship on overtourism.
As this field of inquiry developed, scholars naturally shifted their attention from the
conceptualisation to the measurement of overtourism. Regrettably, though, a review of this
research shows that, for the most part, overtourism measurement still hinges on 'old' indicators. In
fact, indicators like tourism density and tourism intensity, date back to research conducted by
scholars of the International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism (AIEST) in the mid-20th
century (i.e. Markos, 1949; Sundt, 1950). This, in turn, suggests that – like in research on resident
attitudes towards tourism – “more limited progress has been made than the volume of research
might suggest (Sharpley, 2014, p. 39). Be that as it may, last year, the outbreak of Covid-19 razed
the global tourism industry to the ground, thereby putting the measurement of tourism pressure on
hold. Indeed, according to the UNWTO (2021), international tourist arrivals dropped by 73.9% in
2020. Thus, bearing in mind that “it is mostly loss that teaches us the worth of things”
(Schopenhauer), one may wonder: How have residents experienced their destination without
tourism? Insights into the experience of the complete absence of tourism on the part of residents
is critical for DMOs, which are charged with the task of spearheading the rebuilt of tourism from
scratch.
To sum up, the author aims to answer the three following questions in this dissertation:
1. How has overtourism been portrayed in news media?

2. How useful has research on overtourism been?
3. How have residents experienced their destination without tourism?
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Interestingly, by addressing these three questions in that specific order, this dissertation
follows the rise and fall of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Indeed, moving from the portrayal of
overtourism in the newspapers (Study I) to an assessment of its usefulness in research (Study II)
parallels the transition of “overtourism” from news to academia. In a similar vein, rounding off
with the perception of the complete absence of tourism (Study III) parallels the recent fall of
overtourism and, conversely, the emergence of its diametrical opposite – “undertourism”.
Academia
• Coinage and • Occurrence of
popularisation of opposite scenario:
"overtourism" • Development "undertourism"
of a pseudo-new
research area
News Covid-19
Figure 1: Dissertation Structure // Overtourism History
Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the findings of the three studies conducted to
answer these three questions will achieve a balance between theoretical meaningfulness and
practical relevance, overall1.
1
Since this dissertation is a monograph, its contribution shall be assessed as a whole.
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At this point, the author would like to make two last observations – one for the laymen and
one for the experts. In fact, on one hand, the former may wonder what the significance of focusing
on such a narrow topic is. Well, this is precisely what a PhD is about! Turning to the visual
explanation of this degree by Might (2010) might help making this point (Figure 2). In short,
assuming that the circle represents mankind's knowledge, a PhD essentially consists in advancing
that frontier a tiny bit (Might, 2010).
→ This Dissertation!
Figure 2: Knowledge throughout Education

(Might, 2010)
The experts, on the other hand, may criticise the one or the other aspect of this dissertation.
Thus, it might be worth bearing in mind that the whole point of a PhD is essentially “to show that
you’re able to do good enough research by yourself” (Rugg & Petre, 2004, p. 18).
With this in mind, the reader is now welcome to proceed to the next section, in which the
key concept of this dissertation – “overtourism” – will be thoroughly discussed.
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2 Overtourism
In this section, definitions of overtourism are critically reviewed. To this end, non-
academic and academic sources were scoured for definitions. Mindful of the exhortation to “avoid
becoming giants of definition while remaining midgets of explanation” (Mazanec, 2009, p. 320),
the purpose of this section is to highlight the shortcomings of these definitions rather than to
provide a comprehensive review thereof.
2.1 Dictionary Entries
Naturally, one would first look up the definition of overtourism in a dictionary. This,
however, will be of little help. In fact, this term has only entered the MacMillan and the Cambridge
dictionaries and is waiting to be accepted in the Collins dictionary (Table 1Error! Reference
source not found.). While this dearth of definitions underscores the recent nature of overtourism,
it comes as a surprise in light of the momentum this phenomenon has gained. Be that as it may,
these dictionary definitions are volume-based in that they focus heavily on the number of tourists.
However, as will be shown later, this is only one of the tip of the iceberg.
Dictionary Definition
Collins “the phenomenon of a popular destination or sight becoming

overrun with tourists in an unsustainable way” (Dickinson, 2018)
MacMillan “a situation where the number of tourists visiting a place causes

significant problems” (MacMillan Education Limited, 2019)
“the situation when too many people visit a place on holiday,

Cambridge so that the place is spoiled and life is made difficult for the people
who live there” (Cambridge University Press, n.d.)
Table 1: Dictionary Definitions
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2.2 Industry Reports
Dissatisfied with such reductionist definitions, one might then turn to industry reports for
more nuanced explanations. Thus, for instance, the European Union defined overtourism as:
“the situation in which the impact of tourism, at certain times and in certain locations,
exceeds physical, ecological, social, economic, psychological, and/or political capacity
thresholds” (Peeters et al., 2018, p. 15)
On one hand, this definition acknowledges the specificity of overtourism – that is, the fact
that it affects particular areas in specific moments. On the other hand, it refers to limits, which
suggests the existence of numerical ceilings beyond which things go south. Alternatively, the
World Tourism Organization defined overtourism as:
“the impact of tourism on a destination, or parts thereof, that excessively

influences perceived quality of life of citizens and/or quality of visitors experiences
in a negative way” (UNWTO et al., 2018, p. 6)
This definition is two-sided as well. In fact, while it recognizes the adverse effects of
tourism on both residents and tourists, the use of the unquantifiable adverb 'excessively' implicitly
hints at the existence of a tipping point.
2.3 Academic Sources
Eventually, one might look for a definition in academic publications. Some scholars have
acknowledged that a universally accepted definition of overtourism does not exist to date (Avond
et al., 2019; Capocchi et al., 2019; Capocchi et al., 2020; Nepal & Nepal, 2019). This comes as no
surprise, considering that researchers do not even agree on an aspect as basic as its spelling. In fact,
while the term is mostly spelt without hyphen (overtourism), it is occasionally also written with
hyphen (over-tourism). For instance, in the publications examined in Study II, the former spelling
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variant has – on average2 – been used 92% of the time. The lack of agreement among scholars is
also nicely illustrated by the use of separate interpretations in the recent book edited by Ribeiro de
Almeida et al. (2020). For instance, in Chapter 5, overtourism is defined as "tourism impact that
immensely and negatively affects residents’ life and/or tourists’ experience" (Lai et al., 2020, p. 93).
However, in Chapter 12, it is defined as "the subjective belief of residents that there are too many
visitors" (Rejón-Guardia et al., 2020, p. 236).
An occasionally cited definition is the one by reporter Dave Richardson, who allegedly
considered overtourism as “any destination suffering the strain of tourism” (Richardson, 2017; as
cited in Huettermann et al., 2019; Koh & Fakfare, 2019; Séraphin et al., 2018). However, a careful
reading of the original article raises doubts about the attribution of this interpretation. In any case,
this alleged definition could neither be any more vague nor any less informative. Therefore, it will
not be considered in this dissertation.
Another occasionally quoted definition is the one published by Milano et al. (2018) in the
semi-academic outlet “The Conversation”. They considered overtourism as:
"the excessive growth of visitors leading to crowding in areas where residents suffer the
consequences of temporary and seasonal tourism peaks leading to permanent changes
to their lifestyles with denied access to local amenities and a general loss of well-being"
(Milano et al., 2018)
This definition acknowledges the dynamic component of overtourism – that is, the
evolution of visitor numbers over time. At the same time, it ascribes the repercussions of
overtourism to temporally limited circumstances. In reality, though, overtourism is also about the
incessant presence of visitors. In proverbial words, constant dripping wears away the stone.
Moreover, Nepal and Nepal (2019) defined overtourism as "a post-mass tourism
phenomenon in which some destinations have transitioned from a state of ‘mass’ to a state of
‘over’" (Nepal & Nepal, 2019, p. 3), In spite of its appeal, this concise definition implies that
overtourism is merely an extension of mass tourism. This, in turn, suggests the existence of a
2 Refers to the average of the spelling variant's relative usage in title, abstract and keywords.
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tipping point beyond which the phenomenon changes its name. In his editorial, Singh (2018)
explicitly distinguished overtourism from mass tourism.
2.4 TourMIS 2019
Next to secondary sources, one could engage in primary data collection to define
overtourism. Indeed, professionals might offer valuable input in this regard. Thus, the author
conducted a survey at the 15th TourMIS Workshop, which was held at Modul University Vienna
on September 12-13, 2019. The initial sample consisted of 47 questionnaires. Following the
removal of ineligible and incomplete surveys (n=22), the final sample consisted of 25
questionnaires.
Respondents were asked to formally define overtourism. Almost all of them answered this
question (n=24). Four answers were corrected for minor mistakes (e.g. quaility → quality). The
results are summarized by means of a word cloud (Figure 3). The mention of the terms ‘local’
(n=8) and ‘visitor’ (n=6) suggest that these are the two main parties involved. The occurrence of
the stems ‘mani’ (n=6) and ‘overcrowd’ (n=5) lend support to the hypothesis that density and
crowding play a major role in overtourism. Finally, the mention of the term ´quality´ (n=5) hints
at the relationship between overcrowding and the nature of one´s experience.
Figure 3: Word Cloud (n=24)
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Thus, the answers suggest a linear mechanism of overtourism: the excessive concentration
of people – both tourists and residents - in space (n=6) or time (n=6) negatively affects either
party´s quality of experience. The behaviour of visitors, however, was hardly mentioned. In fact,
only one respondent acknowledged the type of tourism as a potential problem. This comes as a
surprise, as several cities in Europe suffer from misbehaving visitors (e.g. Amsterdam, Budapest,
Prague), and indicates that respondents view overtourism from a quantitative rather than a
qualitative perspective. Interestingly, respondents also mentioned destination management (n=4),
which suggests that DMOs might become the scapegoats bearing the blame for the lamentable
state of affairs.
The respondents were further asked to express their dis(-)agreement with six statements
about overtourism. The mean scores are summarized in the radar chart below (Figure 4). On one
hand, they tend to disagree with the statement that overtourism is mainly a European phenomenon
(Ø = 1.78). This shows that they are aware that destinations in other continents suffer from it, too
(e.g. Boracay Island). On the other hand, they tend to agree with the statement that overtourism is
not only about tourism (Ø = 4.05). This indicates that they understand that there is more to it than
meets the eye.
.9
3 3
.3 .8
4 .8
Figure
.0 4: Respondents´ (Dis-)Agreement
(n=22-23)
3
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.8
2.5 Final Remarks
In sum, it seems that scholars have not yet agreed on one single definition and that
professionals have a rather linear interpretation of overtourism. A few final consideration are in
order. To begin, in the second volume of "The Open Society and its Enemies", Popper (1945) argues
that the nominalist definition has to be viewed backwards. In other words, the 'defining formula'
needs to precede the 'defined term' (Equation 1).
𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑔
⏟ 𝑑𝑜𝑔 = 𝑝𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑦
⏟
𝐷𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑎 𝐷𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑚
Equation 1: Nominalist Definition

(Popper, 1945, p. 9)
In the case of overtourism, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the 'defined
term'. If one considers that, like “tourismphobia”, this term is only one of the "new arbitrary
shorthand labels" (Popper, 1945, p. 13) in tourism research, the extent of the discussion
surrounding its definition might seem exaggerated.
Moreover, the suitability of the term itself could be called into question. According to
Koens et al. (2018), this word originated from the news and made it into research more due to its
currency than its meaning. It has grown to be an umbrella term for the adverse effects of tourism.
However, it does not capture their heterogeneity. In fact, it wrongly implies that the effects of
tourism are homogeneous. Hence, they recommend a more impartial expression, such as 'visitor
pressure' (Koens et al., 2018, p. 9).
Furthermore, the prefix over- is inappropriate for two reasons. First, it gives the whole
word a negative connotation. The MacMillan Dictionary defines this prefix as “too much”
(MacMillan Education Limited, n.d.). To be sure, one may argue that the sentiment of the whole
word depends on the polarity of the term that follows the prefix, such as over-optimistic (positive)
and over-pessimistic (negative). However, as Terence once said, “too much of anything is bad”.
Thus, the connotation of words containing this prefix tends to be negative. Second, it creates the
wrong impression that overtourism is solely about (too much) tourism. Koens et al. (2018) argue
that occurrences in fields other than tourism are to some extent responsible for matters associated
with it. For instance, the advent of online retail and the resulting fleets of delivery vans flooding
the streets exacerbate the impression that the city is overcrowded (Koens et al., 2018). The
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emergence of “temporary migrants“ (Maitland & Newman, 2009a, p. 13), such as expats and
students, complicates matters further. Indeed, blurring the lines between 'residents' and 'tourists',
the rise of this group of people poses a challenge for DMOs. The Vienna Tourist Board, for instance,
has responded to this trend by undertaking a paradigm shift from 'tourism' to 'visitor economy' in
their most recent strategy (Kettner et al., 2021).
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3 Literature
As overtourism is a “multi-dimensional” (Koens et al., 2018) and “multi-faceted”

(Capocchi et al., 2019) phenomenon, it shall come as no surprise that the literature review of this
dissertation taps into different domains. The purpose of this section is to introduce the literature
on which the three empirical studies will be based. In the first part (3.1), the author will introduce
two theories from mass media research: agenda-setting and framing. In the second section (3.2),
he will review the two fields of inquiry from which research on overtourism has allegedly emerged:
tourism impacts and carrying capacity. In the third part (3.3), the author will survey the scarce
body of literature on the measurement of this phenomenon.
3.1 Mass Media
3.1.1 Agenda-Setting
“It may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think,
but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.”
(Cohen, 1963, p. 13)
The origins of the agenda-setting theory can be traced back to the book "Public Opinion"
by Lippmann (1922). In particular, in the introduction titled "The World Outside and the Pictures
in our Heads", this author argued that people have indirect knowledge of their surroundings, which
they consider to be veracious. He substantiated his claim with a few examples. For instance, the
glorification and the condemnation of important figures are both based on the positive and negative
perception the public has of them, respectively. Lippmann (1922) posited that people create mental
representations of things ('fictions'), which they cannot sense or feel first-hand ('realities'). These
conceptions, in turn, dictate people's actions in the real world (Figure 5). Thus, people operate in
a setting, whose complexity requires them to rely on indirect knowledge. In sum, he asserted that
any person “makes for himself a trustworthy picture inside his head of the world beyond his reach”
(Lippmann, 1922, p. 29).
Page 20 of 133
Reality
Consequent Mental
Action Representation
Figure 5: Triangular Relationship

Based on Lippmann (1922)
Interestingly, Lippmann (1922) alluded to the allegory of the cave by Plato. In the seventh
book of "The Republic", this philosopher wrote about prisoners in a cavern (Figure 6). They are
bound with shackles and can only look forward (A). There is a barrier at their back (B) and farther
behind it a fire is burning (C). Between the two, there is an elevated path (D). People move on it
holding some items, whose shapes are then projected to the side of the cave in front of the prisoners
(E) (Figure 6). Only being able to catch sight of the shades of the items, they mistake the former
for the latter. In other words, for the prisoners "the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows
of the images" (Plato, ca. 375 B.C./2012, p. 228)3.
3
The allegory does not finish here. In fact, Plato then writes about what happens when a prisoner
is freed (Plato (ca. 375 B.C./2012). Since a detailed account of the whole allegory would exceed the scope
of this review, the interested reader is directed to Book VII of "The Republic" for the whole story.
Page 21 of 133
C
B
E
Figure 6: Plato´s Cave4
The parallel between the allegory of the cave and the agenda-setting theory is striking. The
public (shackled prisoners) can only see the shadow of what the media (moving people) choose to
publish (items held). At first sight, this analogy seems to capture the essence of the agenda-setting
theory. On second thought, however, there is more to it than meets the eye. Thus, in what follows
this framework will be concisely reviewed.
3.1.1.1 First Level Agenda-Setting (Objects)
Building on the work of Walter Lippman, McCombs and Shaw (1972) examined the role
media played in the presidential elections of 1968. Specifically, they compared what citizen in
Chapel Hill considered to be central matters with what the news they consumed actually reported.
In short, they found a high degree of correspondence between the points highlighted by the media
and the ones deemed critical by the people. Interestingly, this association holds irrespective of the
4
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/PlatosCave.gif
Page 22 of 133
political orientation of citizen and of the political focus of news. This finding renders the
alternative explanation of 'selective attention' improbable, and, conversely, lends weight to the
agenda-setting role of news media. Far from intending to make any causal claims, these authors
concluded that “the evidence that voters tend to share the media´s composite definition of what is
important strongly suggests an agenda-setting function of mass media” (McCombs & Shaw, 1972,
p. 184). Their study was the spark that ignited future research, as evidenced by the 13,800+
citations received to date, according to Google Scholar (29th March 2021), as well as by the recent
creation of the 'The Agenda Setting Journal'.
3.1.1.2 Second Level Agenda-Setting (Attributes)
Two and a half decades later, McCombs et al. (1997) went a step further. They realised that
agenda setting research need not be limited to items ('objects'). Rather, it could be extended to the
features of items ('attributes'). Indeed, drawing on the notion of framing, they argued that the
inclusion of some and the exclusion of other aspects determine people's mental representation of
a given matter. Thus, this new avenue of inquiry shifts the focus of attention from the significance
of items to that of their features. They referred to it as "the second level of agenda setting"
(McCombs et al., 1997, p. 704). These authors put their amended framework to the test on two
elections in Spain in 1995. In short, they investigated whether media's depiction of the contestants
during the run moulded people's perception of them after the vote. Suffice it to say, they found
some agreement between the two. Thus, far from meaning to make any causal claims, they built
on Bernhard C. Cohen in concluding that "the news media not only tell us what to think about, they
also tell us how to think about it" (McCombs et al., 1997, p. 716).
Less than a decade later, Chyi and McCombs (2004) argued that news media perpetuates
an item by stressing different aspects of it as time goes by ('frame-changing'). Drawing on framing
literature, they noted a lack of generally applicable features ('frames'), which, in turn, restricts
analysis possibilities. Hence, they set out to develop a framework that can be adopted irrespective
of the item under scrutiny. In this undertaking, they focussed on the spatial (vertical axis) and
temporal (horizontal axis) aspects of reporting (Figure 7).
Page 23 of 133
Figure 7: Frame-Changing Model
(Chyi & McCombs, 2004, p. 25)
Chyi and McCombs (2004) put their framework through its paces. They investigated
changes in reporting of the rampage at a high school by one news outlet (n=170) with regard to
the two features of their framework – space and time. Concerning the former, they observed an
expansion from a narrow (particulars) to a broad (criminality) scope. Regarding the latter, they
noticed a switch from a backward-looking (circumstances) to a forward-oriented (precautions)
perspective. Interestingly, these two frames are inter-related: while the narrow range goes hand in
hand with the retrospective angle, the broad range goes arm in arm with the prospective angle
(Chyi & McCombs, 2004).
3.1.1.3 Third Level Agenda-Setting (Networks)
Even though not used in this study, for the sake of completeness the existence of a third
agenda-setting version ought to be mentioned. Vu et al. (2014) put forward the Network Agenda
Setting (NAS) model, which posits that news media may impart the significance of inter-
connections between items ('objects') and features ('attributes') together. In other words, they
asserted that news media is “capable of telling us what and how to associate” (Vu et al., 2014,
p. 669).
Page 24 of 133
3.1.2 Framing
The roots of framing theory can be traced back to the seminal essay by Goffman (1974)
and the empirical work by Kahneman and Tversky (1984). However, for the purposes of this
review, going back to the work of Entman (1993) may suffice. Lamenting the lack of a universal
conceptualisation of 'framing', he defined this act as “to select some aspects of a perceived reality
and make them more salient in a communicating text” (Entman, 1993, p. 52).
In addition, he argued that frames have four roles. First, they establish an issue. Second,
they find its origins. Third, they make appraisals. Fourth, they propose solutions (Entman, 1993).
Since then, a plethora of publications have been published on this subject, as evidenced by the
18.700+ citations, according to Google Scholar (29th March 2021). A drawing frequently
associated with news media on the Internet visualizes framing quite well (Figure 8). In reality, a
victim is running away from a perpetrator. However, the news frames this situation in such a way
that – in the eyes of the audience – the perpetrator is the victim, and vice versa. Another, more
contemporary, example would be news coverage about COVID-19. Naturally, the reporting of
absolute numbers (e.g. '500') captures more attention than that of relative percentages (e.g. '0,03%').
Figure 8: Framing -
A Drawing from the Internet5
5
http://indiafacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/image0021.jpg
Page 25 of 133
Having reviewed the agenda-setting and framing theories separately, it is now time to
connect these two conceptual frameworks. McCombs and Ghanem (2001) devoted an entire book
chapter to this6. Thus, their work can be adduced to this end. They argue that second level agenda-
setting and framing go hand in hand. In short, they claimed that:
“framing is the construction of an agenda with a restricted number of thematically

related attributes in order to create a coherent picture of a particular object”
(McCombs & Ghanem, 2001, p. 70)
McCombs and Ghanem (2001) considered frames as features of items and classified them
according to their content as well as to their scope (Figure 9). Regarding the former, they
differentiated between rational ('cognitive') and emotional ('affective') features. Concerning the
latter, they distinguished between narrow ('micro') and broad ('macro') range. The authors argued
that frames lie rather at the right end of the spectrum. They went a step further and drew a
distinction between facets ('aspects') and main topics ('central themes'), and deemed the last
interpretation to be more beneficial (McCombs & Ghanem, 2001).
6
The chapter is titled “The Convergence of Agenda Setting and Framing”.
Page 26 of 133
Figure 9: Agenda-Setting and Framing Theory
(McCombs & Ghanem, 2001, p. 71)
Having said that, the lines between agenda-setting and framing remain quite blurred. In the
author´s impression, there simply seem to be two separate school of thoughts. Be that as it may,
'framing' has undoubtedly become the more popular term. Weaver (2007) examined the evolution
of these two concepts7 in the database 'Communication Abstracts' between 1971 and 2005. In short,
he found that the usage of agenda-setting had modestly increased (n=+39), whereas that of framing
had skyrocketed (n=+163). He suggested that the popularity of the latter term could be ascribed to
its equivocality and inclusiveness (Weaver, 2007).
7
For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that Weaver's (2007) analysis included the
concept of 'priming' as well. Not being of relevance to the purposes of this dissertation, the reader was
spared this detail in the text.
Page 27 of 133
In sum, the author is well aware of the subtle difference between these two concepts.
However, what is relevant to the purposes of this analysis is the common ground they share – that
is, their preoccupation with the manner in which items are portrayed by the media (Takeshita,
2006; Weaver, 2007). Hence, even though the one or the other scholar will most certainly criticise
this, for the purposes of this dissertation, framing will be interpreted rather narrowly, and will thus
be used interchangeably with attribute agenda-setting in the remainder of this dissertation.
3.1.3 Mass Media in Tourism Research
Finally, it is worth spending a few words on the use of the agenda-setting and framing
theories in tourism research. The number of studies adopting the former can be counted on the
fingers of one hand. The article by Schweinsberg et al. (2017) is a notable example thereof. In
contrast, the number of studies adopting the latter framework requires more than one hand to be
counted. A few recent examples include the article by Hansen (2020) and that by Leung et al.
(2019). Taken together, the combined use of second-level agenda setting and framing theory in
tourism ventures into a little-known territory.
Page 28 of 133
3.2 Tourism and Leisure
An aspect that has provided for discussion is the question of whether the neologism
"overtourism" actually represents something new or whether it simply rehashes old topics. The
title of an article on LinkedIn, which was probably one of the sparks that ignited the debate, put it
quite elegantly: "Overtourism: old wine in new bottles?" (Dredge, 2017).
To begin, the origins of this term remain uncertain. Rafat Ali, the CEO of the news outlet
Skift, proclaimed himself as the inventor of this term (Ali, 2018). However, an online search
suggests otherwise. In fact, looking for "overtourism" in Nexis® Uni, reveals that this word was
actually first used by Celia Herron on August 6, 1981 (Herron, 1981). To the best of the author´s
knowledge, no scholar has remarked this to date.
Some personalities deny the existence of this phenomenon. One, for instance, has equated
"overtourism" with "overcrowding" (see e.g. Karantzavelou, 2020). In so doing he has mistaken a
part for the whole. In fact, the quantitative aspect is only the tip of the iceberg. In a way, this
reminds of the differentiation between density and crowding made by Stokols (1972). In his
seminal work, he wrote:
"Density is viewed as a necessary antecedent, rather than

a sufficient condition, for the experience of crowding"
(Stokols, 1972, p. 275)
Most authors simply limit themselves to mentioning their stand on this debate. For instance,
Koens et al. (2018) argued that the matters subsumed under this word go back a long way and then
briefly review the literature on the effects of tourism. However, to the best of the author´s
knowledge, only Capocchi et al. (2020) and Wall (2020) went a step further and actually devoted
an entire publication to making their point.
In their research letter, Capocchi et al. (2020) drew a distinction between overtourism as a
word and as an occurrence. They examined the references of academic and non-academic
documents about overtourism (n=29) and found that the authors of these documents cite research
dating all the way back to the 1970s, such as Doxey (1975, as cited in Capocchi et al., 2020) (n=3)
and Pizam (1978, as cited in Capocchi et al., 2020) (n=2). Accordingly, they concluded that while
as a word overtourism is unheard of, as an occurrence it is well-known.
Page 29 of 133
In his perspective article, Wall (2020) traced the roots of overtourism back to carrying
capacity. Initially, research on this subject was conducted by leisure scholars in rural areas in North
America. Later, their work was picked up by tourism scholars, who extended it to urban
destinations in Europe under the masquerade of overtourism. Thus, like Capocchi et al. (2020),
Wall (2020) also differentiated between overtourism as a word and as an occurrence, albeit not as
explicitly. However, unlike Capocchi et al. (2020), he did not substantiate his claims with empirical
evidence – these are solely based on his expertise.
In sum, these two studies suggest that one must tell apart the term and the phenomenon.
The former is new, whereas the latter is old. In addition, they demonstrate that little attention has
been paid to determining the roots of overtourism empirically.
3.2.1 Historical Excursus
Koens et al. (2018) argued that overtourism goes back a long way and urged other scholars
“not to let this work go to waste” (Koens et al., 2018, p. 10). Not even two years later, Wall (2020)
lamented that tourism scholars have taken up the concepts of carrying capacity “without full
appreciation of their origin and history” (Wall, 2020, p. 213). As the author does not want to make
himself guilty of the same mistake, in what follows the history of overtourism will be briefly
reviewed. To this end, seminal works were identified by sifting through the bibliographies of
selected publications.
When inspecting the 'older' references of the chosen documents (i.e. 1900-2000), one
comes across renowned classics, such as The Economics of Welfare (Pigou, 1930; as cited in Nepal
& Nepal, 2019) and methodological milestones, such as A Paradigm for Developing Better
Measures of Marketing Constructs (Churchill, 1979; as cited in Martín Martín et al., 2018). Most
importantly, though, one stumbles upon influential works in tourism. Table 2 shows five frequently
cited 'old' publications.
Page 30 of 133
Publication Topic Times Cited
Butler (1980) Tourism Area Life Cycle 37

Doxey (1975) Irridex Model 34
O'Reilly (1986) Tourism Carrying Capacity 14
Pizam (1978) Social Impacts of Tourism 9
Wagar (1964) Carrying Capacity 5
Table 2: Seminal Works
As can easily be seen from Table 2, overtourism seems to spring from research on resident
attitudes / tourism impacts and (tourism) carrying capacity. The fact that both 'capacity' and
'resident' occurred over 200 times in the references lends further weight to this claim. Thus, these
two streams of research will be concisely reviewed in the next subsections.
3.2.2 Resident Attitudes / Tourism Impacts
The presence of two distinct subjects in the heading of this section might irritate the one or
the other reader and even raise the suspicion that the author will be mixing apples and oranges in
what follows. Hence, it shall be pointed out that the decision to treat these topics together was
made based on the assertation that the former subject has mainly been studied in tandem with the
latter (Rasoolimanesh & Seyfi, 2020).
Reviewing the scholarly literature on resident attitudes would require a strenuous effort. In
fact, this is one of the most extensively investigated fields in tourism (McGehee & Andereck,
2004). Accordingly, conducting a comprehensive review of this subject "would be a difficult, if not
impossible task" (Sharpley, 2014, p. 42). Hence, a slightly unconventional approach was adopted
– that is, existing reviews and commentaries on this subject were analysed (Figure 10). To identify
such publications, a backward reference search was performed starting from the recent viewpoint
article by Rasoolimanesh and Seyfi (2020). The reader could now criticise that the quality of this
review depends directly on the quality of the reviews selected. Thus, the recognition that existing
reviews offer an outstanding insight into theories and methods adopted in this field (Hadinejad et
al., 2019) might allay, or even clear, such doubt.
Page 31 of 133
Figure 10 : Publications about Resident Attitudes
Since it has just been mentioned that this topic has extensively been investigated, the reader
might be surprised that the timeline above only includes reviews from the last decade. To be sure,
earlier reviews were also identified, such as the ones by Yen and Kerstetter (2009), Harrill (2004),
and Easterling (2004). However, Deery et al. (2012) argued that – save for the latter – these tend
to have a specific emphasis. That said, the review by Easterling (2004) was excluded too, as it is
relatively dated.
There seems to be no agreement on exactly how long this topic has been investigated for.
Almeida García et al. (2015) argued that it has been studied for over three decades, while Sharpley
(2014) claimed that it goes back over three and a half decades. In any case, this subject has been
investigated for a long time.
Deery et al. (2012) divided this stream of research into four phases (Figure 11). In the first
one, fundamental notions were explained. The second phase saw the emergence of conceptual
frameworks, such as the Tourism Area Life Cycle by Butler (1980; as cited in Deery et al., 2012).
The third one witnessed the appearance of measurement tools, such as the Tourism Impact Scale
by Ap and Crompton (1998, as cited in Deery et al., 2012). In the fourth phase, these were put
through their paces and fine-tuned.
Figure 11: Four Phases

(Deery et al., 2012, p. 65)
Page 32 of 133
In retracing the history of this stream of research, Deery et al. (2012) cited almost only
journal articles. It shall be mentioned, however, that the publication of articles was accompanied
all along by that of books, such as The Golden Hordes (Turner & Ash, 1975), Tourism, the Good,
the Bad, and the Ugly (Rosenow & Pulsipher, 1979), The Holidaymakers (Krippendorf, 1986), and
Coping with Tourists (Boissevain, 1996).
Overall, this stream of research paints a relatively coherent picture. Almeida García et al.
(2015) claimed that while scholarly inquiry has generated consistent results about locals' appraisal
of the economic effects of tourism, it has yielded mixed findings about their evaluation of the
social and environmental ones. Generally, the former is positive (e.g. employment), whereas the
latter are negative (e.g. congestion) (Almeida García et al., 2015). Thus, it seems that the adverse
social and environmental effects offset, or even outweigh, the beneficial economic ones. Tourism
scholarship seems to have followed that order. Indeed, Sharpley (2014) argued that the realization
of the social and environmental disadvantages of tourism moderated the initial excitement for its
economic advantages.
A brief inspection of the reviews mentioned in Figure 10 suffices to identify three common
limitations of research on resident attitudes and tourism impacts. In what follows these will be
discussed. However, for the sake of readability, the author will not list all reviews for each aspect
in an in-text citation parenthesis. Instead, a summary table of which publication mentions what
point is provided in Table 8 in Appendix 1.
First, some authors have noted the limited use of theory (Appendix 1Error! Reference
source not found.). In their longitudinal review (n=140), Nunkoo et al. (2013) found that less than
half of the publications (n=64; ≈46%) were 'theoretical'. At the same time, they observed that over
time scholars have more and more embraced theory. Accordingly, they anticipated that this
upward-rising tendency would persist in the future. Their bright prediction has recently been
confirmed. In their systematic review (n=90), Hadinejad et al. (2019) found that more than half of
the publications (n=50; ≈56%) were 'theoretical'.
Moreover, there seems to be unanimous agreement on the fact that Social Exchange Theory
(SET) is the most frequently used theoretical framework. In fact, without exception, in each review
mentioned in Figure 10 the authors argued this to be case. The widespread adoption of this theory
might be traced back to its advocacy by John Ap (e.g. Ap, 1992). Be that as it may, both the
longitudinal and the systematic review mentioned above substantiate the currency of this theory.
Page 33 of 133
Nunkoo et al. (2013) found that a bit more than half (n=36; ≈56%) and Hadinejad et al. (2019)
found that a little less than half (n=29; ≈45%) of the 'theoretical' publications adopted this
framework, respectively.
In spite of its widespread adoption, SET is not without its criticisms. Sharpley (2014)
argued that it assumes a deliberate interaction between visitors and residents. This, however, need
not always be the case. Inspired by the work of Krippendorf (1987; as cited in Sharpley, 2014), he
put forward a spectrum of possible contacts between visitors and residents (Figure 12). At the one
end, there is conscious trade. At the other end, there is inadvertent coexistence. The latter scenario
reminds of the poetic description of overtourism by Singh (2018), who argued that it occurs “when
local people cannot walk on the street without rubbing shoulders with crowd of tourists” (Singh,
2018, p. 415).
Figure 12: Spectrum of Visitor-Resident Interaction

(Sharpley, 2014, p. 39)
In other words, Sharpley (2014) argued that SET is only applicable to the left half of the
spectrum (Figure 12). In addition, he claimed that this model has been read in a superficial way -
that is, disapproval of tourism by locals has been said to result from an unfavourable cost-benefit
analysis on their part. Yet, in reality such straightforward logic is rarely adopted. Thus, he
concluded that SET is ill-suited for this field of study (Sharpley, 2014). To be sure, one could find
many more criticisms of this framework in the literature. However, this would turn what is meant
to be a concise excursus into a tedious digression.
Page 34 of 133
Overall, SET seems to have been exhausted. Rasoolimanesh and Seyfi (2020) noted that in
view of its shortcomings and its long-standing prevalence, scholars have attempted to integrate it
with other frameworks and to amend it. The systematic review by Hadinejad et al. (2019)
corroborates the adoption, albeit marginal, of alternative models. Indeed, they found that
academics have employed, inter alia, social representation (n=4; ≈6%) and institutional theory
(n=3; ≈5%). A variant of the latter has also been used in one of the publications identified in Study
II (i.e. Taş Gürsoy, 2019). Be that as it may, Hadinejad et al. (2019) encouraged researchers to
thoroughly deal with frameworks from other areas of inquiry, especially that of psychology.
Second, some authors have observed the prevalence of quantitative methods (Appendix
1Error! Reference source not found.). Once again, the longitudinal and systematic reviews
corroborate these claims. Nunkoo et al. (2013) found that over two thirds of the publications
reviewed (n=101; ≈72%) employed a quantitative method. Hadinejad et al. (2019) went a step
further and draw a distinction between data collection and data analysis. They found that a
quantitative method was adopted in over four fifths of the publications (n=75, ≈83%) for both data
collection and analysis8.
Needless to say, the prevalence of quantitative methods is not without its consequences. In
fact, some authors have ascribed the lamentable state of research to such preponderance. Most
notably, Deery et al. (2012) claimed that scholarly inquiry has managed to discover numerous
effects of tourism but has failed to unravel the rationale behind their (un-)favourable appraisal on
the part of locals. They borrowed the onion model of culture from Rousseau (1990; as cited in
Deery et al., 2012) – whose description would exceed the scope of this discussion – to show that
the catalogue of effects generated by quantitative inquiry merely constitutes the outer skin.
Accordingly, they advocated employing qualitative methods to scratch beneath the surface and
transition from the description to the explanation of effects (Deery et al., 2012). Building on their
work, Sharpley (2014) got to the heart of the matter, stating that academic inquiry “tends to
describe what residents perceive, but not necessarily explain why” (Sharpley, 2014, p. 42).
Third, some authors have noted the loose pertinence of research to reality (Appendix 1).
Sharpley (2014) argued that the scholarly work does not mirror the rising importance of tourism
8
Figure to be verified with the article's lead author.
Page 35 of 133
in emerging states. In fact, he found that a great number of investigations has been conducted in
the countryside in North America. Accordingly, he lamented that places whose economies hinge
on tourism have considerably been neglected. Hadinejad et al. (2019) observed a chasm between
academia and industry as well. At country level, they found that the lion's share of investigations
has been performed in the United States (21%) and in China (10%). Inversely, at continent level,
they found that most investigations have been carried out in Asia (30%) and in North America
(26%). Having said that, they argued that official statistics indicate states in Europe, such as France,
to be more appropriate study locations (Hadinejad et al., 2019). To be sure, the adoption of a one-
dimensional figure, such as tourist arrivals, could be questioned. In fact, a two-dimensional
indicator, such as tourism intensity, might be more telling. Nevertheless, the idea of using
'objective' figures to evaluate the need for studying the 'subjective' perception of locals sounds
reasonable.
Thus, overall, this review of reviews paints a tragic picture of research on resident attitudes
and tourism impacts. In fact, it suggests that it has merely scratched the surface. Some authors put
these disappointing findings quite elegantly. For instance, Deery et al. (2012) asserted that this
field of study is stuck "in a state of arrested development" (Deery et al., 2012, p. 65). In addition,
Sharpley (2014) maintained that “more limited progress has been made than the volume of research
might suggest” (Sharpley, 2014, p. 39). However, on the bright side, this brief historical excursus
offers two main take-home lessons. First, it demonstrates the value of systematic reviews. In fact,
such investigations allow scholars to substantiate their claims with 'hard' evidence. This, in turn,
lends weight to the work performed in this dissertation (Study II). Second, it raises several
questions. In fact, this historical discussion makes one wonder whether research on overtourism
has made itself guilty of the same 'mistakes' as that on resident attitudes and tourism impacts, or
whether it has learnt from them. Specifically:
o Have scholars embedded their research in conceptual frameworks?

o Have qualitative / mixed methods been used more than quantitative ones?
o Has research been conducted in destinations in urgent need of solutions?
Page 36 of 133
3.2.3 (Tourism) Carrying Capacity
In a similar vein to the one about resident attitudes and tourism impacts, a review of
carrying capacity in leisure and tourism would be a gargantuan undertaking. Hence, here too, a
backward reference search was performed starting from the recent perspective articles by Wall
(2020) and Butler (2019) to identify seminal works in the field (Figure 13). Thus, in what follows
these works will be reviewed in chronological order, with a focus on the added content of each
publication to avoid repetition.
Figure 13: Publications about Carrying Capacity
The roots of research on carrying capacity can be traced back to the monograph by Wagar
(1964). He noted that even though often referred to in leisure research, carrying capacity lacks a
recognized definition. For the aims of his publication, he interpreted it as “the level of recreational
use an area can withstand while providing a sustained quality of recreation” (Wagar, 1964, p. 3).
Yet, quality can be preserved at various degrees of use, as a balance is found at each point. Hence,
carrying capacity has to be tied to administration goals, which serve to determine an acceptable
grade of quality. In the case of leisure, the greater aim is to ensure visitor satisfaction, which stems
from the achievement of wants. Thus, Wagar (1964) identified a set of motives for leisure and
explores the influence of density9 on quality – not empirically, but conceptually – by sketching
potential relations for the established purposes (Figure 34 in Appendix 2). For instance, if one
longed for isolation, the presence of others would be detrimental (Figure 34-I). In contrast, if one
yearned for company, the presence of others would be beneficial (Figure 34-K). In sum, he found
9
Wagar (1964) actually used the term 'crowding'. However, since he actually referred to 'density',
the latter term is used. For thorough explanations of the difference between density and crowding, please
read Stokols (1972) and Rapoport (1975).
Page 37 of 133
that the influence of density on quality hinges on the motives for leisure. Accordingly, carrying
capacity is essentially about normative evaluations.
A decade later, Wagar (1974) criticised the word 'capacity'. In fact, it implies that grounds
for restricting use lie in the features of an area rather than in its influence on recreation quality.
Also, this word conceals the fundamental difference between positive (is) and normative (should)
matters. In this regard, he noted that determining degrees of use involves deciding what resulting
alterations are admissible – and this is an evaluation of the latter kind, which has to be made by a
person. Accordingly, Wagar (1974) recommended replacing 'carrying capacity' with expressions
that help keep the attention on administration goals, such as 'use limits'. With regard to the latter,
he advocated the adoption of a holistic perspective – that is, to assess their impacts on an entire
territory rather than on solely part of it. Moreover, he argued that use restrictions are merely one
of the measures people may put up with it in exchange for a satisfactory experience. Other trade-
offs include admission charges and behavioural rules. Thus, administrative matters come with
intricate challenges, which render “any search for an impersonal carrying capacity formula totally
unrealistic” (Wagar, 1974, p. 278).
Afterwards, Stankey and McCool (1984) performed a critical assessment of carrying
capacity in leisure research drawing on the review article by Graefe et al. (1984, as cited in Stankey
& McCool, 1984). They argued that this notion was not originally meant to explain the relation
between contentment and number of people met, and identify six reasons for its feeble nature. First,
visitors deliberately engage in leisure pursuits that yield enjoyment ('self-selection'). Second, when
an area undergoes alteration, it gets visited by a different type of crowd ('displacement'). Third,
visitors pursue leisure activities for several reasons. Thus, when confronted with circumstances
unfavourable to the achievement of one objective, they give weight to another purpose attainable
in that situation ('reducing dissonance'). Fourth, contentment is measured on a single-item scale,
which requires respondents to summarise good and bad features into one figure. Such
operationalization is at odds with the multi-faceted nature of events ('psychometric additivity').
Fifth, running into other people need not necessarily be unwelcome. In fact, visitors engage in
leisure activities for reasons other than isolation, too. Thus, the influence of chance meetings on
enjoyment hinges on the significance of one's purpose in a given situation ('saliency'). Sixth and
last, contentment is influenced by visitors' liking for ('preferences') and anticipations of
('expectations') certain degrees of use. Moreover, and more importantly, Stankey and McCool
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(1984) claimed that the relation between number of people met and contentment is actually
immaterial from an administrative point of view. Thus, they advocated moving from extent of use
to aspired circumstances and put forward the 'Limits of Acceptable Change' (LAC) model10.
In tourism research, the definition of carrying capacity by the UNWTO has grown to be
the established one – in spite of falling under 'grey literature'. This institution defined carrying
capacity as:
"the maximum number of people that may visit a tourist destination at the same time,
without causing destruction of the physical, economic and sociocultural environment and an
unacceptable decrease in the quality of visitors’ satisfaction"
(UNWTO, 1981, p. 5)
The two underlined sets of words show that this interpretation of carrying capacity makes
itself vulnerable to the same criticisms as that in leisure research. In fact, it implies that an
excessive amount of people (extent of use) will lead to inadmissible reduction of enjoyment
(normative evaluation). Be that as it may, the expression 'tourism carrying capacity' is also often
associated with O'Reilly (1986). In his short article, this scholar acknowledged sub-dimensions of
carrying capacity that had previously received little attention, such as the socio-cultural one. He
argued that each has its own ceiling, and notes these may be at variance with one another. Finally,
he stated that "capacity cannot be used as an absolute limit but as a means to identify critical
thresholds which need attention" (O'Reilly, 1986, p. 258).
Shortly before the turn of the millennium, Lindberg et al. (1997) discussed three
shortcomings of carrying capacity. First, it offers limited direction for concrete application, as it
hinges on normative standards that are either vague or impractical. Second, it gives the impression
of being a value-less notion when yardsticks are by nature value-laden. Third, it places emphasis
on degrees of use although administration goals are about aspired circumstances. Having said that,
they identified prerequisites for carrying capacity to be valuable, such as accord on normative
matters and authority to impose use restrictions. They found that these are seldom fulfilled,
10
For a detailed description of the LAC model, please read Stankey et al. (1985).
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wherefore they asserted that the “effective application of the traditional carrying capacity is
difficult, if not impossible” (Lindberg et al., 1997, p. 463). Finally, they went a step further, and
suggested that the expression itself ought to be dismissed, for it causes confusion.
Shortly after the turn of the millennium, McCool and Lime (2001) published a critical
review of carrying capacity. They noted that the relation between degree of use and extent of effect
need not be linear (Figure 14). For instance, curve A shows a scenario in which little use suffices
to swiftly bring about large effects. This would imply that adverse consequences can only be
avoided by prohibiting use entirely, and that substantial cutbacks in use would be required to
mitigate them. Alternatively, curve C shows a scenario in which large effects only occur after
considerable use. This would suggest that sites have an inherent capacity, whose exceedance
results in the drastic worsening of circumstances (McCool & Lime, 2001). The reasoning of
scholars currently investigating the carrying capacity of urban destinations (e.g. Bertocchi et al.,
2020; Tokarchuk et al., 2020) seems to be in keeping with the rationale underlying this last scenario.
Figure 14: (Non-)Linear Relations between Use and Impact

(McCool & Lime, 2001, p. 375)
Moreover, McCool and Lime (2001) commented on seven aspects of carrying capacity.
First, any degree of use has some sort of effect. Second, carrying capacity is frequently interpreted
as an upper limit above which things go south. However, as adverse impacts are inevitable (1st
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point), such arithmetic interpretation is impractical and ill-suited. Also, the buildout of tourism is
about compromises. For instance, people may put up with environmental drawbacks (e.g.
pollution) in exchange for economic benefits (e.g. employment). Third, the relation between
degree of use and extent of effect is ambiguous, as a multitude of factors influences it (Figure 14).
Fourth, the determination of a carrying capacity unavoidably leads to the imposition of restrictions
– and this comes with considerable allocative implications. Fifth, carrying capacity confounds
positive (is) with normative (should) matters – a criticism already voiced by Wagar (1974). Sixth,
it implies that systems are steady when in reality the opposite is the case. Seventh, and last, carrying
capacity is about setting the right focus, namely establishing reasonable circumstances, rather than
excessive degrees of use, for a given place. Thus, they asserted that “the concept of a tourism and
recreation carrying capacity maintains an illusion of control when it is a seductive fiction, a social
trap, or a policy myth” (McCool & Lime, 2001, p. 386). Accordingly, they recommended
abandoning it and adopting fundamentally different models, such as LAC, instead.
Needless to say, this stream of research is not without its criticisms. In the author´s opinion,
two of them are worth mentioning. To begin, leisure research in North America has been carried
out by a relatively small group of researchers, which includes Jerri J. Vaske, Lori B. Shelby,
Thomas A. Heberlein, and Alan R. Graefe. Having a second name is not the only characteristic
these authors share. A brief look at the bibliographies of their publications suffices to suggest that
they rarely cited sources outside their own field. Yet, crowding has been studied in disciplines
other than leisure, too. For instance, in retail one can find conceptual (e.g. B. B. Anderson, 1976;
Harrell & Hutt, 1976; Eroglu & Harrell, 1986) as well as empirical (e.g. Harrell et al., 1980; Eroglu
& Machleit, 1990) articles on this subject. In addition, these leisure researchers have mostly
employed the single-item scale by Heberlein and Vaske (1977, as cited in Shelby et al., 1989). This
instrument is inherently flawed, as it allows for various shades of ‘crowded’ but precludes any
nuances of ‘uncrowded’ (Figure 15). In spite of that, they abide by the old exhortation “to use this
scale in other studies” (Shelby et al., 1989, p. 288).
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Figure 15: Crowding Scale
(Neuts & Nijkamp, 2012, p. 2140)
The contribution of this historical excursus is twofold. First, it shows that the determination
of a numerical carrying capacity in cities would raise several questions. For instance, who would
decide on the threshold (e.g. scientists vs politicians)? Moreover, and more importantly, what
would people do if they found it (e.g. restrict access, impose taxes)? Thus, the reduction of tourism
carrying capacity to a single number seems to remain a mirage. This, in turn, begs the question of
whether – in spite of the lessons this stream of research has taught – scholars investigating
overtourism have fallen under the spell of the 'magic number'. Or, more formally:
o Do scholars further pursue the quest for a numerical carrying capacity?
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3.3 Overtourism Measurement
Like the phenomenon of overtourism, the measurement of tourism pressure is “old wine in
new bottles” (Dredge, 2017). In fact, it may already have turned into vinegar. Around the middle
of the past century, members of the International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism
(AIEST) were debating on the measurement of tourism. Markos (1949) noted the limited meaning
of absolute figures in national tourism statistics. Hence, he suggested the adoption of a common
denominator, namely each country's respective area. He named it “le degré d'intensité du
tourisme“ (Markos, 1949, p. 132). Sundt (1950) argued that this measure is not well suited for
countries with either a very small (e.g. Monaco) or a very large (e.g. Australia) area. Accordingly,
he proposed using the resident population as common denominator. He referred to this measure as
“l'intensité touristique” (Sundt, 1950, p. 4). Around seventy years later, scholars are still discussing
the denominators of these two indicators, albeit under the masquerade of 'overtourism' (e.g. Amore
et al., 2020; Weber et al., 2019). This seems to suggest that, with respect to the measurement of
tourism pressure, the scholarly community may have remained 'none the wiser' (Ap, 1990, p. 615)
after all.
3.3.1 State of the Art
The author finds that little attention has been paid to the measurement of 'overtourism' - an
aspect noted by De La Calle-Vaquero et al. (2020), too. This comes as no surprise. In fact, it is
natural for scholars to address the measurement of a phenomenon after having dealt with its
conceptualisation. Deery et al. (2012), for instance, found this to be the case with research on the
social effects of tourism. Since overtourism is a relatively recent phenomenon at the time of writing
(2020-2021), only a handful of publications entirely dedicated to its measurement could be
identified. In what follows, these will be reviewed in chronological order (Figure 16). Interestingly,
this mirrors the evolution of overtourism. Indeed, this buzz word has transitioned from media to
academia (Koens et al., 2018). In a similar way, research using this term has been published first
in industry reports (2017-2019), then in book chapters (2019-2020), and finally in journal articles
(2020-2021).
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Figure 16: Publications about Overtourism Measurement
Two words of caution are in order before delving into the literature review. First, the author
would like to emphasize that only studies about 'overtourism' have been examined. Thus,
publications in which scholars attempted to establish a destination's carrying capacity, such as the
research note by Tokarchuk et al. (2020) or the journal article by Bertocchi et al. (2020), will only
be acknowledged. Second, the author would like to point out that the latest research on this subject
published in the 'Special Issue on Measuring and Monitoring Overtourism' in the Journal of Travel
& Tourism Marketing (Wattanacharoensil & Weber, 2020) has not been reviewed, yet. It will,
however, be integrated into the final dissertation.
3.3.1.1 Industry Reports
The first three seminal publications about overtourism measurement are non-academic
(Figure 16). To begin, Guevara Manzo et al. (2017) came up with nine indicators. Of these, two
are about the significance of tourism and seven about the implications of overcrowding. The
authors computed these indicators for several cities (n=68), which they grouped into five
percentiles for comparison11 (Guevara Manzo et al., 2017). Some of the measures calculated in
this dissertation (Study III) will be compared against these percentiles, as done, for instance, by
Alcalde Garcia et al. (2018). Next, Peeters et al. (2018) conducted a large-scale study at regional
level (NUTS 2)12. They identified eight measures as indicative of overtourism hazard. Of these,
five are about relative shares and three about proximity to certain infrastructure. Their study built
in several respects on the one by Guevara Manzo et al. (2017). For instance, the authors adopted
11
1st → 5th percentile: risk = high → low (Guevara Manzo et al., 2017)
12
NUTS: Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics
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two measures from that study, namely 'tourism share of GDP' and 'air transport seasonality'
(Peeters et al., 2018, pp. 74–75). In addition, since the data is skewed and kurtic, the authors
classified the regions into quintiles, too. To be exact, though, they reversed their polarity13 (Peeters
et al., 2018, p. 44). That said, it cannot be emphasized enough, that in both reports the categories
indicate varying degrees of potential hazard of overcrowding (Guevara Manzo et al., 2017) and
overtourism (Peeters et al., 2018), respectively – not varying extents of actual occurrence of either
phenomenon. In both publications, the authors pointed this out explicitly.
These two studies are not without criticism. Peeters et al. (2018) argued that the approach
by Guevara Manzo et al. (2017) has four shortcomings. First, the authors only considered urban
destinations. Second, examining solely places where overtourism is felt hinders the determination
of limits beyond which this phenomenon gets perceptible. Third, data for cities tends to lack
completeness and comparability. Fourth and last, the authors mixed measures about antecedents
with those about consequences of overtourism. In addition, Peeters et al. (2018) also acknowledged
the limitations of their own study. Most notably, they could not identify critical thresholds for their
measures, as these fluctuate a great deal across regions. Instead, they put forward a tentative
catalogue of questions (n=10), whose answers indicate the extent to which a place is exposed to
overtourism (Peeters et al., 2018, p. 79).
Finally, Weber et al. (2019) brought it all together by calculating traditional statistics,
measures from both reports, and alternative figures for a few destinations (n=9). Most importantly,
though, they conveyed the importance of the denominator in two-dimensional indicators, such as
tourism density and intensity (Weber et al., 2019). In this regard, Guevara Manzo et al. (2017) used
the surface containing the twenty most popular sights as denominator for tourism density. Amore
et al. (2020) were a little more conservative and used the surface of just the ten most popular sights
to compute such measure. As for tourism intensity, the latter used the number of residents in the
'city' instead of in the 'larger urban agglomeration' as denominator (Amore et al., 2020, p. 122).
This distinction brings to mind that made by Eurostat between 'city' 'functional urban area', and
'greater city' (Kotzeva et al., 2019, p. 14). It also evokes the differentiation made by TourMIS
between 'city area only' and 'greater city area' (TourMIS, n.d.–a).
13 1st → 5th percentile: risk = low → high (Peeters et al., 2018)
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3.3.1.2 Academic Publications
In academia, four publications about overtourism measurement could be identified. Of

these, two are book chapters (De La Calle-Vaquero et al., 2020; Visentin & Bertocchi, 2019) and
two are journal articles (Amore et al., 2020; Perles-Ribes et al., 2020).
3.3.1.2.1 Book Chapters
Visentin and Bertocchi (2019) thoroughly examined the state of tourism in Venice. In
particular, they analysed the infiltration of tourism into non-touristic areas of the city. To this end,
they calculated the ratio of beds in vacation rentals (i.e. Airbnb) over beds in traditional lodging
establishments (e.g. hostel), by district. Even though they found high values for less frequented
districts, they argued that vacation rentals are only half the story. In fact, these are still reconvertible.
Thus, they examined the commercial offering of the districts. To this end, they computed the ratio
of alimentary over non-alimentary stores by district. Rather unsurprisingly, they found a high value
for the city's most popular district: San Marco. Moreover, and perhaps more interestingly, they
drew a connection between the two analyses and discovered that while traditional lodging
establishments go hand in hand with non-alimentary stores, vacation rentals go arm in arm with
alimentary stores. This result suggests different consumption patterns on the part of the visitors. In
sum, they concluded that overtourism is “irreversibly changing the balance of the city´s economic
landscape” (Visentin & Bertocchi, 2019, p. 19). Their conclusion echoes the stream of research on
'new tourism areas' (Maitland & Newman, 2009b), and also reminds of the words by Magnus
Enzensberger, who stated that “the tourist destroys what he seeks by finding it". In fact, it is safe
to say that, eventually, more and more visitation will turn the once authentic place into a touristic
hotspot. This, in turn, will lead visitors to swarm to another 'off the beaten path' area, thereby
furthering this vicious cycle.
De La Calle-Vaquero et al. (2020) performed a comprehensive review of research on
overtourism measurement. They drew a distinction between tourism activity and tourism
specialisation indicators. The former merely measure the quantity of tourism (e.g. number of
overnights). Hence, they are not well suited to reveal tourism pressure. Nevertheless, examining
their evolution (growth) and distribution (seasonality) over time enhances their value. The latter
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link an element concerning tourism with one regarding the destination (e.g. tourism intensity).
Moreover, and more importantly, these authors acknowledged that the measurement of
overtourism faces the same challenges as the determination of carrying capacity – that is, “the
inability to establish values based on which many visitors can be considered too many” (De La
Calle-Vaquero et al., 2020, p. 319).
On a side note, De La Calle-Vaquero et al. (2020) acknowledged big data as an additional
data source. In spite of understanding its appeal, in the author's opinion this type of data is hard to
'institutionalise' for two reasons. First, using data from a company makes DMOs dependent on
them. This, in turn, is not reliable in the long run. For instance, Kádár (2014) analysed tourists'
consumption of Budapest with data from Flickr. The decline of this platform would have left
DMOs relying on its data empty-handed. Hence, the author suggests enjoying the advent of big
data with due caution.
3.3.1.2.2 Journal Articles
Amore et al. (2020) attempted to create a compound measure of overtourism. To begin,

they computed traditional statistics in an innovative way. In the case of tourism density, they
replaced the surface of the destination with that containing the ten most popular sights on
TripAdvisor. In other words, they simply changed the denominator. In the case of tourism intensity,
they were a little bolder and changed the numerator, too. That is, in addition to selecting the number
of residents in the city instead of in the metropolitan area for the denominator, they also substituted
the number of overnights with that of museum visitors in the numerator (Amore et al., 2020).
While their choices are justified, they are not ground-breaking. In fact, other authors have already
calculated tourism density using other areas (Guevara Manzo et al., 2017; Weber et al., 2019).
Similarly, TourMIS gives users the possibility to select statistics for 'city area only' or for 'greater
city area' (TourMIS, n.d.–a). Be that as it may, Amore et al. (2020) computed four measures for a
few cities in Europe (n=15). They then standardised them14 and, finally, treated the simple mean
as compound measure for overtourism.
14
Z-score standardisation by Amore et al. (2020): z = (x- x̅) / s
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Amore et al. (2020) adopted a purely quantitative – and thus allegedly objective – approach.
Indeed, they explicitly stated to have favoured this over the subjective perspective (Amore et al.,
2020, p. 121). In contrast, Perles-Ribes et al. (2020) prided themselves on appreciating the
subjective nature of overtourism. In short, they operationalised overtourism as membership in the
'Network of Southern European Cities against Touristification'. The authors considered
deliberately being part of this association a sign of a destination's concern for the adverse effects
of tourism. Accordingly, they argued that the adoption of this measure differentiates theirs from
other studies (Perles-Ribes et al., 2020). This line of reasoning seems a little far-fetched, though.
In fact, the decision to join such association may be motivated by other factors, such as political
reasons. In this regard, Perles-Ribes et al. (2020) only contemplated one alternative hypothesis,
namely that of member destinations being particularly responsive to the phenomenon under
scrutiny. Thus, they examined whether members of this network score higher on selected
dimensions from Peeters et al. (2018). Otherwise, however, the authors did not attempt to rule out
other surrogate options. Be that as it may, they modeled overtourism as a function of a destination's
competitiveness as well as of its pressure from and dependence on tourism. They computed that
model using different machine learning methods, first separately and then in conjunction15 (Perles-
Ribes et al., 2020).
15
Methods adopted by Perles-Ribes et al. (2020): Logit Model, Naïve Bayes, Support Vector
Machines, (Classification and Regression Tree).
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4 Methodology
This dissertation includes three studies. In this section, their methodologies will be
presented, albeit only briefly. In-depth descriptions will be provided in the respective sections.
In the first study, the author will analyse news articles about overtourism. To be more
precise, content from the following five newspapers will be examined: Guardian, Independent,
Financial Times, Times, and Telegraph. These are the main 'broadsheets' in the United Kingdom
(Oxford Royale Academy, n.d.). Structural topic modeling (Roberts et al., 2014) will be performed
to identify the 'attributes' (agenda-setting), or 'frames' (framing), used in the portrayal of this
phenomenon. Most importantly, though, this method will only be a point of departure – not one of
arrival. In line with Computational Grounded Theory (Nelson, 2020), topic modeling will solely
be employed at the beginning of the analytical journey to let the words speak for themselves. The
findings will then be fine-tuned and validated empirically (Nelson, 2020). While the successful
application of this inductive-deductive framework will only be a drop in the ocean, it makes one
step forward in overcoming the long-standing "artificial dichotomy of inductive versus deductive
reasoning" (Mazanec, 2009, p. 320).
In the second study, the author will examine academic publications about overtourism.
More precisely, a bibliometric analysis will be conducted. This investigation will consist of two
parts. In the first one (descriptive), the landscape of research on overtourism will be mapped. Then,
bibliographic metadata will be summarised and topic modeling will be performed on the abstracts
of selected documents. In the second part (inferential), a citation analysis will be carried out to
ascertain the origins of overtourism research empirically. This knowledge, in turn, will enable the
author to evaluate the “usefulness” of this stream of research. Here, this will be judged according
to i) whether it has made itself vulnerable to the same criticisms of its precursors, and ii) its
boldness. In other words, these analyses will establish whether overtourism research has advanced
our knowledge or whether it has left us "none the wiser" (Ap, 1990, p. 615) after all.
In the third study, selected indicators of tourism pressure will be computed for Vienna
(Austria) to demonstrate the limited significance of allegedly objective measures. Accordingly, the
author will undertake a leap to subjective indicators. In view of COVID-19, this will lead him to
the diametrical opposite of overtourism – that is, “undertourism”. Specifically, the experience of
the destination without tourism on the part of residents will be examined. Moreover, and perhaps
more importantly, the author had already asked residents how they would imagine their destination
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without tourism before the outbreak of the pandemic. Back then, he posed this question out of a
flash of inspiration, which, in turn, was motivated by the given that “mostly it is loss which teaches
us about the worth of things” (Arthur Schopenhauer). In fact, never would he have thought that
such apocalyptic scenario could become reality. Well, COVID-19 proved him wrong! Be that as it
has been, in this study, residents´ hypothetical imagination of their destination without tourism
(2018-2019) will be compared with their actual experience thereof (2020-2021). In the author´s
opinion, this represents the unique contribution of this last study.
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5 Empirical Part
5.1 Study I
5.1.1 Rationale for this Study
In spite of the attention overtourism has received from the media, to the best of the author´s
knowledge, in only three studies have researchers investigated how this phenomenon is depicted
in the news. In what follows their shortcomings will be pinpointed. The author would like to
emphasise that the aim is not to bash other researchers, but rather to highlight the added value of
this study.
To begin, Phi (2020) carried out content analysis on news articles in English. Her research
suffers from three limitations. First, since the term "overtourism" was reportedly invented in 2016
(Ali, 2018), it is rather surprising that she found articles dating all the way back to 2008. This
might be due to the fact that the platform she used disregards hyphens (LexisNexis, n.d.). If not
get to the bottom of such odd results, she could have at least addressed them. Second, she did not
provide concrete information about the sources of the articles. In fact, she only vaguely referred to
them as "leading international/national newspaper outlets" (Phi, 2020, p. 2093). Such imprecise
indication is of little help to anyone wishing to replicate her study. Third, her analytical effort was
probably rather limited, as she fed the articles to a software, whose slogan used to be “text in
insight out” (Leximancer, n.d.).
Next, Pasquinelli and Trunfio (2020) carried out a thematic narrative analysis on news
articles in English. Their study is not bulletproof either. First, they collected articles from pro-
tourism outlets, such as Adventure Travel News, and from neutral outlets, such as The
Independent. Thus, they mixed apples and oranges. If not considered, this should at least have
been addressed in the analysis. Second, they inferred topics from the appearance of the most
common terms together with "overtourism". This reminds of the approach adopted by Capocchi
et al. (2020), who derived topics from the most common keywords of academic publications. Be
that as it may, such inference seems a little far-fetched. In fact, there are more appropriate
techniques to identify topics, such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Blei et al., 2003) and Structural
Topic Modeling (Roberts et al., 2014). The latter will be used in this study.
Finally, Clark and Nyaupane (2020) performed inductive and deductive content analysis
on news articles in English. Before critically reviewing their article, a word of praise is indicated.
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In fact, these two authors are the only ones to have adopted a conceptual framework from mass
media – that is, framing theory by Entman (1993, as cited in Clark & Nyaupane, 2020). Having
said that, their study differs in a few fundamental respects from the present one. To begin, they
identified destinations linked with overtourism first, and then looked for articles about them. In
this study, the reverse approach will be adopted. In addition, they applied ex ante defined frames.
In this study, the frames, or rather the topics, will be determined ex post – thereby letting 'the text
speak for itself'. Finally, like Pasquinelli and Trunfio (2020), the authors analysed articles from
different types of outlets. However, unlike these two scholars, they took this into consideration
during the analysis. In contrast, in this study, only articles from broadsheet newspapers will be
considered.
In sum, this study differs in several respects from the ones mentioned above. In a nutshell,
it boasts a larger sample (n>300), covers the whole lifecycle of overtourism (2016-2020), adopts
a more sophisticated method (structural topic modeling), and, most importantly, borrows theory
from another discipline. Hence, the added value of this research. Similarities and differences
between the present and the three aforementioned studies are summarized in Table 3.
Pasquinelli and Trunfio Clark and Nyaupane

Criterion Phi (2018) Present Study
(2020) (2020)
overtourism,
Keyword(s) overtourism > overtourism
over-tourism
Sample Size n = 202 n = 56 n = 85 n > 300
Article Language English English English English
Time Period 2008 - 2018 05/2018 - 08/2018 - 06/2016 - 06/2020
news media outlets,

Article Source established newspapers online news broadsheet news
credible publications
thematic narrative inductive and deductive structural topic

Method content analysis
analysis content analysis model
agenda-setting and
Theory - - framing theory
framing theory
Software Leximancer NVivo - R (Studio)
Table 3: Present vs Previous Studies
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5.1.2 Methodology
5.1.2.1 (Structural) Topic Modeling
Much of the research conducted on topic models builds on the work by Blei et al. (2003).
In fact, in this publication the authors put forward the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Their
work has been a catalyst for further research, as evidenced by the 36.800+ citations received thus
far, according to Google Scholar (30th March 2021). Following the example by Blei et al. (2003),
the meaning of central terms is explained right at the outset. Thus, in an effort to bring the
description of this method closer to the subject of this examination, what they named 'document'
and 'corpus' will here be denoted as 'article' (news) and 'collection' (dataset), respectively. In
contrast to Blei et al. (2003), LDA will only be explained conceptually, though. Hence, the curious
reader is redirected to their original paper for technical details, such as the calculation of posterior
distributions and the like.
LDA is defined as "a generative probabilistic topic model" (Blei et al., 2003, p. 997). Its
fundamental proposition is that articles display several topics (Blei, 2012). This sounds reasonable.
Indeed, an article about overtourism may primarily deal with resident attitudes, but could also
touch upon other subjects, such as gentrification and degrowth. Specifically, LDA posits that a
collection of articles is formed by a fixed set of topics, each of which comprises a given set of
words. Thus, the creation of an article consists of two steps. In the first one, the constellation of
topics is determined (1). In the second one, every word is allocated to a topic (2A) and selected
from that topic's pool of words (2B) (Blei, 2012). This creation process is shown in Figure 17.
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(1)
(2B)
(2A)
(2B)
Figure 17: Topic Modeling
(Blei, 2012, p. 78)
Blei (2012) made a very interesting observation in this regard – that is, the articles are
revealed, whereas the constellation of topics is concealed. Accordingly, topic models aim to derive
the invisible from the visible, thus "reversing the generative process" (Blei, 2012, p. 79).
As mentioned above, LDA has been a springboard for further research. Blei et al. (2003)
praised it for its versatility. Almost a decade later, Blei (2012) observed that several modifications
have been developed. For instance, Blei and Lafferty (2006a) acknowledged one shortcoming of
LDA, namely its inability to account for associations between topics. Therefore, they developed
the Correlated Topic Model (CTM), which, as the name suggests, takes such inter-relations into
account. Specifically, this shortcoming is ascribed to the independence postulate of the Dirichlet
distribution. The CTM circumvents this impractical restriction by working with a logit-normal
distribution instead. They put this topic model through its paces and found that it outperforms LDA
in both exploration and prediction (Blei & Lafferty, 2006a). In addition, Blei and Lafferty (2006b)
noted that the exchangeability postulate of LDA is often ill-suited. In fact, in various collections
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of records16, topics change with the passing of time (e.g. academic publications). Therefore, these
authors advanced the Dynamic Topic Model (DTM). As the name suggests, this variant takes into
consideration the temporal development of topics. In short, it does so by splitting a collection of
records into time spans and deriving the topics of an interval from those of the previous one. The
resulting topics are then used to create the records of that interval. The authors put the DTM to the
test and found that it yields good results (Blei & Lafferty, 2006b). To be sure, there are countless
other alterations of LDA. However, reviewing them would exceed the scope of this section. The
CTM could be quite useful to identify overtourism themes. Indeed, several overtourism-related
issues are interconnected, such as vacation rentals and urban gentrification. The DTM, in contrast,
would be less helpful. In fact, as overtourism has only been studied for a few years, the temporal
sequence is only of marginal relevance. Nevertheless, it might become more important in the future.
For instance, if scholars were to analyse news coverage about overtourism in a few years, they
would be well advised to divide their datasets into before, during, and after COVID-19.
Be that as it may, the method of choice for this study is the Structural Topic Model
(Roberts et al., 2014). Even though their publication has 'only' received 900+ citations, according
to Google Scholar (30th March 2021), their work is a gateway to further research, too17. Roberts et
al. (2016) emphasize that they have created STM as a generic topic model for social science
researchers, because the development of ad hoc ones would otherwise be an extremely onerous
task for most such scholars. According to Roberts et al. (2014), the value of STM lies in its ability
to integrate relevant variables into the determination of the popularity and the composition of
topics. Broadly speaking, STM belongs to the family of 'unsupervised models'. As such, it lets
topics emerge from words a posteriori. More specifically, STM falls into the sub-family of 'mixed-
membership models'. As such, it lets articles display several topics. Thus, in short, STM can be
defined as “a mixed membership model for the analysis of documents with meta-information”
(Roberts et al., 2016, p. 1000). STM is only described theoretically here. For technical details, the
reader is redirected to Roberts et al. (2016). Thus, according to Roberts et al. (2014), like every
16
The more general term ´record´ is deliberately used here to remind the reader that topic modeling
need not be restricted to text – an aspect stressed by its inventors, too (Blei et al. (2003).
17
To be precise, this method had already been introduced by Roberts et al. (2013).
Page 55 of 133
other topic model, STM consists of two building blocks (Figure 18). In the first one, the share of
words that can be allocated to any one topic is established for every single article ('topical
prevalence'). In the second one, the sets of words that have the highest probability of arising from
any one topic are determined ('topical content'). Unlike in every other topic model, though, in STM,
both can be influenced by characteristics of the articles ('covariates') (Roberts et al., 2014).
Figure 18: Structural Topic Modeling

(Schmiedel et al., 2019, p. 945)
Finally, the author is concerned about the interpretability of the topics. In fact, it has
previously been noted that “latent topics are not amenable to substantive interpretation”
(Dickinger et al., 2017, p. 812). Hence, an attempt will be made to perform topic modeling with
'word embeddings'. This being only an aspiration of the author, a thorough discussion of that
technique would be premature. In short, words are placed in a vector, which contains information
about its context (Žižka et al., 2019). The linguistic concept underpinning this approach – that is,
the distributional hypothesis by Harris (1954) – will be discussed in the dissertation. For the time
being, it shall suffice to put it in Firthian terms: “You shall know an object by the company it keeps!”
(Firth, 1962, p. 179). Even though, there are some relevant packages in Python, such as lda2Vec
(Moody, 2016) and Top2Vec (Angelov, 2020), this attempt will be performed in R. The reason for
Page 56 of 133
this is quite simple: the author does not master the other programming language. Having said that,
the word2vec (Wijffels, 2020c) package in R will be used to create the word embeddings. This
relies on the homonymous algorithm by Mikolov et al. (2013).
5.1.2.2 Suitability of the Method
The reader may wonder why the author chose to use 'topic modeling' to analyse the 'frames'
(framing), or 'attributes' (agenda-setting), of overtourism in news media. After all, these seem to
be two conceptually distinct entities. In computer science, a topic is "a distribution over a fixed
vocabulary" (Blei, 2012, p. 78). In communication research, a frame is "a central organizing idea
or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events" (Gamson & Modigliani, 1987,
p. 143). Turning to the field of linguistics helps unveil the common ground between these two
entities. According to the Cambridge Dictionary of Linguistics, topics have an effect on the register
used, which includes – inter alia – words (Brown & Miller, 2013). Put simply, if newspapers were
to emphasize the conflict between residents and tourists, they would probably use words like
'angry' and 'backlash', whereas if they were to stress the sharing economy they would probably use
words like 'ban' and 'rentals'. Hence, the connection between the two entities.
Some scholars have explicitly addressed the suitability of topic modeling to the
identification of frames. DiMaggio et al. (2013) argued that topics could be regarded as frames.
Ylä-Anttila et al. (2018) went a step further and claimed that three conditions have to be fulfilled
for this to be the case. First, framing needs to be considered as inter-concept associations. Second,
the text to be placed under scrutiny needs to be about one sole matter. Third, the resulting topic
model needs to be validated (Ylä-Anttila et al., 2018). In this study, McCombs and Ghanem's
(2001) conceptualisation of framing is adopted (1st condition). In addition, the corpus to be
examined consists only of news articles about 'overtourism' (2nd condition). Finally, the identified
topic model will be subject to validation (3rd condition).
Furthermore, even though the use of topic modeling for the identification of frames is a
relatively new ground, a few applications can be found. Scholars have for instance done this on
the subject of the Refugee Crisis (e.g. Heidenreich et al., 2019) and Covid-19 (e.g. Yu et al., 2020).
Thus, overall, this brief discussion suggests that topic modeling is suitable for identifying frames,
or attributes, in thematically restricted news articles.
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5.1.2.3 Some Thoughts
The reader may observe that the author could have opted for supervised machine learning,
as done by Burscher et al. (2014) for instance. However, Nicholls and Culpepper (2020) noted that
such approach comes with the risk of succumbing to a particular bias – that is:
“there is a danger of falling into the drunk under the streetlight syndrome, in which we
focus on the points we can see under the streetlight of supervised methods, and failing
to explore the darker terrain of unconsidered and unexpected potential frames.”
(Nicholls & Culpepper, 2020, p. 3)
In addition, these authors put k-means clustering, exploratory factor analysis, and structural
topic modeling to the test and found that the latter one outperforms the former two. In more detail,
they concluded that this method works well, albeit only for thematically restricted content
(Nicholls & Culpepper, 2020). Since this study only examines articles about one subject –
overtourism – such constraint should not pose a problem.
The reader may also question the role of the researcher in such approach. According to
Grimmer and Stewart (2013), by no means does automated text analysis make scholars redundant.
Rather, they continue to play an important role throughout the entire investigation (Grimmer &
Stewart, 2013). This point of view is shared by other scholars, too. For instance, DiMaggio et al.
(2013) argued that since the software has no knowledge of the text it processes, it is their own
reading of the topics that imbues them with meaning. Accordingly, they consider topic models a
point of departure rather than one of arrival (DiMaggio et al., 2013). In sum, the literature seems
to suggest that, at last, "the burden of making sense of the results is still on the researcher" (Jacobi
et al., 2016, p. 103).
In addition to the role of the scholar, the reader may also question the role of theory in such
approach. Indeed, the advent of big data has raised doubts about the need for theory. Most notably,
the CEO of Wired, Chris Anderson, published a provocative article titled “The End of Theory” (C.
Anderson, 2008). His piece of writing was the spark that ignited the debate about the role of theory
in science, as evidenced by the plethora of scholars citing his work (e.g. Boyd & Crawford, 2012).
In this regard, Mazanec (2020) argued that research is never free from theory, as “we are bound to
hypothesize if we like it or not” (Mazanec, 2020, p. 5).
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The 'Computational Grounded Theory' framework introduced by Nelson (2020) nicely
rounds up the two previous paragraphs. In short, this is a methodological workflow that consists
of three phases (Figure 19). In the first one ('Pattern Detection'), the analyst uses software tools to
bring the text into a more intelligible format. This might unveil aspects that had not been thought
of. In addition, the analysis is documented and can therefore easily be replicated. In the second
phase ('Pattern Refinement'), the analyst can simply inspect the most relevant documents of each
topic instead of having to browse through all of them. This selective engagement with the data
guarantees the trustworthiness of its reading as well as the completeness of its coverage. In the
third stage ('Pattern Confirmation'), the analyst examines the generalisability of his or her results
with other text mining tools. This empirically validates – or better said, 'corroborates' 18 – the
findings from the two previous phases. In sum, this framework is "a three-step approach that
combines inductive grounded theory with deductive quantitative tests" (Nelson, 2020, p. 5).
Interestingly, the clever combination of rivalling research strategies (inductive vs deductive) and
approaches (qualitative vs quantitative) calls into question the usefulness of these long-standing
dichotomies. This, however, shall by no means overshadow another noteworthy aspect of this
framework, namely its focus on replicability. The latter is of utmost importance, especially
considering the heatedly debated 'reproducibility crisis' of the scientific realm19.
18
See Popper (1934/1959).
19
See e.g. Baker (2016).
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2. Pattern Refinement
• Inductive • Deductive
• e.g. STM • Guided deep reading • e.g. NLP
1. Pattern Detection 3. Pattern Confirmation
Figure 19: Computational Grounded Theory

Adapted from Nelson (2020, p. 14)
Thus, the author will perform structural topic modeling on news articles to detect patterns,
fine-tune these by carefully reading the most representative ones for each topic, and then
corroborate these empirically by means of other text mining tools (Figure 19).
5.1.2.4 Applications in Tourism
A search for prior applications of structural topic models in tourism research was performed
by sifting through the publications in tourism journals that cited Roberts et al. (2014). The
underlying assumption was that if someone used this method, she or he would also reference its
developers. Relatively few publications were identified. Nevertheless, a few comments can be
made. To begin, STM has mainly been used to analyse reviews – be those of restaurants (e.g. Wen
et al., 2020), airlines (e.g. Stamolampros et al., 2019) or hotels (e.g. Hu et al., 2019). To the best
of the author´s knowledge, this method has not been used to examine news media in tourism
research to date. Thus, the adoption of STM for the analysis of news articles represents a
methodological contribution to tourism research.
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5.1.3 Data Collection
A search was performed in Nexis® Uni for news articles in English containing the term
"overtourism" published between 1st January 2016 and 31st December 2020. The variant "over-
tourism" was deliberately not used, as this platform disregards hyphens (LexisNexis, n.d.). The
search was also limited to the following five sources: Guardian, Independent, Financial Times,
Times, and Telegraph (n=602). These include different editions (e.g. The Sunday Times) as well as
sister outlets (e.g. The Observer). The detailed breakdown is provided in Table 9 in Appendix 3.
The list of articles was exported as .xlsx file from this platform for preliminary analysis. For the
dissertation, duplicates and irrelevant articles will be removed.
A few words about the choice of newspaper is in order. According to the Oxford Royale
Academy (n.d.), the five selected outlets belong to the so-called “broadsheets” and each has its
own political inclination. As can be seen from Table 4, these five papers cover the whole political
spectrum. At the same time, the distribution of articles leans toward the right (≈ 51%). Having said
that, since political orientation is not of central interest to this investigation, this slight imbalance
shall not be a cause for concern.
Political
Source Articles21
Orientation20
Guardian left-wing 46
Independent centre-left 113
Financial Times centrist 33
Times centre-right 104
Telegraph right-wing 306
Total 602
Table 4: Selected Newspapers
20
According to Oxford Royale Academy (n.d.).
21
Approximate number of articles before removal of duplicates.
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From the list exported from Nexis® Uni only the following information was kept: headline,
publisher and date. Even though topic modeling could be performed on the titles of the articles,
doing so on their bodies allows a much 'richer' analysis. Therefore, for the dissertation, the full text
of each relevant article will be manually copy-pasted into Excel. At first glance, this may seem
like an incredibly tedious task. On closer examination, though, the two alternatives – setting up a
web crawler and using an Application Programming Interface (API) – are not appreciably less
demanding, at least for a social scientists. Hence, the author´s decision.
5.1.4 Preliminary Results
Even though the first phase of the analysis consists in letting the data speak for itself, the
mind of the author is no blank slate. In fact, as Prof. Mazanec asserted over a decade ago and
corroborated last year, human beings "cannot not hypothesize" (Mazanec, 2009, p. 320, 2020, p. 5).
Having read the articles by Clark and Nyaupane (2020), Pasquinelli and Trunfio (2020) and Phi
(2020), this is even more so the case. Thus, the author will embed his a priori expectations, along
with their underlying rationale, in the subsequent presentation of preliminary results.
5.1.4.1 Descriptive Results
In this subsection, basic descriptive aspects are presented. One such feature will be the
temporal distribution of news coverage about overtourism. The three studies reviewed earlier
(Clark & Nyaupane, 2020; Pasquinelli & Trunfio, 2020; Phi, 2020) offer little insight into the
temporal distribution of news articles. Understandably22, none of them has considered the entire
lifecycle of news coverage about overtourism. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that they have
not resorted to any theory for the temporal distribution of news articles. In contrast, this study
22
Since the articles by Clark and Nyaupane (2020), Pasquinelli and Trunfio (2020) and Phi (2020)
have been published online on 4th August 2020, 7th May 2020 and 21st May 2019, respectively, their data
collection must have taken place before those dates. Hence, the rationale for 'Understandably'.
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examines news coverage about overtourism from its start (2016) to its end (2020)23, wherefore a
reference to a conceptual framework is indicated.
The temporal distribution of the unfiltered headlines retrieved from Nexis® Uni (n=602)
was summarised by quarter and plotted by means of a line graph in Excel. The visualisation
suggests that news coverage about overtourism might have followed the issue-attention cycle by
Downs (1972) (Figure 20). Another aspect worth noting is the fact that the peaks in 2018 and 2019
occurred before (Q2) and during (Q3) the summer, respectively. This mirrors the findings of Guizi
et al. (2020), who observed a similar pattern. They suggested that the adverse effects of tourism
might become more visible in this time (Guizi et al., 2020). Finally, in the dissertation, an attempt
will be made to identify potential explanations for the observed peaks (e.g. notable events).
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2017 2018 2019 2020
Figure 20: News Coverage over Time 2017 - 2020

(n = 602)
23
By no means does the author claim that overtourism has ended. On the contrary, he believes that
the current paralysis of the tourism industry due to Covid-19 – and thus its absence in news media – is only
temporary.
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The other descriptive aspect will be the geographic spread of news coverage about
overtourism. Scholars seem to agree on the reported geography and nature of overtourism. Phi
(2020) claimed that this phenomenon tends to occur in urban destinations. Pasquinelli and Trunfio
(2020) substantiated this claim empirically. They examined the concomitance of the most common
terms with 'overtourism' and found a value of 82% for 'city'. In addition, Phi (2020) found that the
most frequently cited cities are Barcelona (n=65) and Venice (n=44). Pasquinelli and Trunfio
(2020) also identified 'Barcelona' (74%) and 'Venice' (56%) as destinations often connected to
'overtourism'. Clark and Nyaupane (2020) adopted an entirely different approach. They established
which places are most often linked to overtourism through an online search first, and then gathered
news articles about them. Nevertheless, 6 of the 17 locations identified are cities (≈35%).
A 'quick and dirty ' way to identify the most popular destinations is to check the list of
headlines against a geographic database. In this case, the titles of the articles were compared
against the basic database from SimpleMaps.com (n.d.) using the COUNTIF function in Excel.
While this approach is unable to detect some non-urban destinations, such as islands (e.g. Boracay,
Santorini, Skye, etc), it provides a 'good enough' overview of the spatial distribution of news
coverage about overtourism. The results of this exercise (Figure 21) show the bias inherent in
restricting the dataset to newspapers in English. In fact, Edinburgh occupying the fifth place might
more likely be due to the language of the articles than to actual tourism pressure. This, in turn,
raises the question of whether the most frequently mentioned destinations are also the ones
suffering the most from overtourism. This will be verified in the dissertation by taking tourism
intensity as a proxy for tourism pressure24.
24
The measurement of overtourism will be discussed in more detail in Study III.
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50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Figure 21: Most frequently mentioned locations

(n = 602)
5.1.4.2 Topics / Frames
In this subsection, the portrayal of overtourism in the news will be examined. As such, it
constitutes the core of this exploratory analysis. The findings of the previous research yield insights
into the actual content of news articles. To begin, Phi (2020) found that the lion's share of coverage
deals with the volume of visitors. Hence, she argued that “the current public media discourse on
this issue remains rather simplistic” (Phi, 2020, p. 2095). Moreover, Pasquinelli and Trunfio
(2020) found that news media places special emphasis on the amount of visitors. Contrasting this
portrayal with scholarly research, they realised that the numerical dimension is only half the story,
though (Pasquinelli & Trunfio, 2020). Thus, the author expects news coverage about overtourism
to mainly revolve around the volume of tourism. This, in turn, would be a simplistic as well as
reductionist depiction of this 'multidimensional' (Koens et al., 2018) and 'multi-faceted' (Capocchi
et al., 2019) phenomenon. If this were the case, news media would make itself vulnerable to the
criticism of spreading “false knowledge”.
Moreover, previous studies have portrayed overtourism as a clash between visitors and
residents. Phi (2020) found that news media depicts the former as the ones creating the problem
and the latter as the ones suffering from it. Pasquinelli and Trunfio (2020) found that news media
neglects the contribution of locals to the occurrence of this phenomenon. These findings suggest
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the adoption of the 'conflict' frame (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). On a side note, the
contemporariness of the guest-host dichotomy is questionable. In fact, Maitland and Newman
(2009a) asserted that local inhabitants “increasingly behave like tourists in their own city”
(Maitland & Newman, 2009a, p. 14). Tourism scholars – particularly those focusing on
overtourism as an urban phenomenon – have acknowledged this (e.g. Koens et al., 2018; Novy,
2019). Thus, the author expects the news coverage under scrutiny to portray overtourism as a
conflict in which residents are victims and visitors perpetrators.
Furthermore, it would be surprising if news media had not found a whipping boy. After all,
as Eisenhower said, “the search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions”. Phi
(2020) found that news media puts the blame on local stakeholders rather than on the sector's
growth. In a similar vein, Pasquinelli and Trunfio (2020) found that news media holds public
administrations accountable. Together, these findings suggest the adoption of the 'attribution of
responsibility' frame (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). On another side note, this ascription of guilt
can be traced back to a statement by the now former Secretary-General of the UNWTO, Taleb
Rifai. Indeed, he declared that “growth is not the enemy; it´s how we manage it that counts” (World
Tourism Organization, 2017). This statement indirectly puts the blame for the state of affairs on
local stakeholders while pledging allegiance to the growth paradigm (Novy & Colomb, 2019).
Thus, the author expects news coverage to put the blame on local authorities.
As the three paragraphs above nicely demonstrate, the scarce body of knowledge on the
portrayal of overtourism in the news suffices to generate a few expectations a priori. Thus, the
analysis will be carried out with these in mind. Apropos, a thumbnail sketch thereof is in order. In
the dissertation, text pre-processing will be performed with the tm package (Feinerer et al., 2008)
in R. More precisely, the filtered Excel file will be converted into a corpus. Then, upper-case
characters will be converted into lower-case ones, and non-alphabetic characters (numbers and
punctuation) as well as stop words (English) and junk words (custom) will be removed. Next, a
Document-Term Matrix (DTM) will be created. As mentioned earlier, the Structural Topic Model
(Roberts et al., 2014) will be preferred over the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Blei et al., 2003).
Accordingly, the analysis will be performed with the stm package (Roberts et al., 2019) in R. The
topics will be chosen according to the criteria of 'cohesion' and 'exclusivity', as recommended by
Roberts et al. (2014). Moreover, since these authors emphasize the importance of personal
evaluation, selected articles will be attentively read by the researcher. Finally, the identified topics
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will be ratified by a senior scholar familiar with topic modeling (Prof. Mazanec), and validated
empirically. Overall, this procedure will be in line with the tripartite 'Computational Grounded
Theory' framework by Nelson (2020) presented earlier.
5.1.5 Limitations
This study is not without its limitations. To begin, the author will only consider news from
the United Kingdom. Future studies could also consider news from the United States, such as the
New York Times and the Washington Post. Indeed, it would be interesting to make a comparison
between English and American news coverage of overtourism. In addition, the author will only
consider news articles published in English. As noted in the preliminary analysis, this restriction
might cause some bias. Hence, future research could consider news in other languages, such as
Italian and Dutch. Indeed, the preliminary analysis showed that Venice and Amsterdam are two
destinations frequently mentioned in connection with overtourism. Finally, even though the author
will attempt performing structural topic modeling with word embeddings, there is still room for
improvement as regards the methodology.
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5.2 Study II
The second study of this dissertation is a bibliometric analysis of research on overtourism.

At first glance, only one such study seems to have been published on this subject (Barbieri da Rosa
et al., 2020). On closer examination, though, three systematic reviews bearing some resemblance
to a bibliometric analysis can be identified (Agyeiwaah, 2019; Carvalho et al., 2020; Veríssimo et
al., 2020). Thus, one may wonder what the benefit of this study could possibly be. Hence, in what
follows the methodologies of the aforementioned publications will be critically reviewed to show
how this study overcomes their shortcomings.
The bibliometric analysis conducted by Barbieri da Rosa et al. (2020) is the only
investigation that is labelled as such. Their work has a few shortcomings. To start with, there is an
inconsistency between the different sections of their book chapter. In fact, in the methodology,
they used the plural form two times when claiming to have looked for “the terms of overtourism”
(Barbieri da Rosa et al., 2020, p. 46) ; which suggests the adoption of multiple keywords. However,
in the conclusion, the use of the singular form in their statement to have looked for “only the search
term overtourism” (Barbieri da Rosa et al., 2020, p. 46) indicates the adoption of a single keyword.
Moreover, and more importantly, considering that their data collection took place in March 2019,
the small sample size (n=24) seems rather improbable.
The systematic literature review by Veríssimo et al. (2020) is introduced as a systematic
review, yet the analysis is described as bibliometric. At first sight, their study seems to bear a
striking resemblance to the present one. In fact, they, too, performed a bibliometric analysis and
visualised results with VOSViewer (van Eck & Waltman, 2010). However, on second thought, one
realises that their study differs in one fundamental respect from the present investigation – that is,
they performed a review of studies about 'tourismphobia' AND 'overtourism' (Veríssimo et al.,
2020). In the author's opinion, in spite of being closely related, these are two distinct concepts. The
former indicates “the fear, aversion or social rejection that local citizens in a destination feel
towards tourists”, whereas the latter denotes “the subjective belief of residents that there are too
many visitors” (Rejón-Guardia et al., 2020, p. 236). Thus, one may conclude that looking for both
terms in their systematic review, Veríssimo et al. (2020) ended up mixing apples and oranges.
Page 68 of 133
The mapping literature review by Carvalho et al. (2020) is not without its flaws. The
description of their literature search is somewhat confusing. In the text, they claimed to have
looked for words other than 'overtourism', which they vaguely referred to as “synonyms, singular,
plural and derivative words” (Carvalho et al., 2020, p. 18). Expecting to find these words in the
table, the reader is then disappointed to discover that none is actually mentioned there. Moreover,
Carvalho et al. (2020) only retained heavily cited publications. This criterion is not particularly
sensible, as more recent publications (e.g. 2019) will naturally have less citations than older ones
(e.g. 2018). In other words, the adoption of this criterion leads to the a priori exclusion of
potentially valuable studies. Furthermore, Carvalho et al. (2020) reviewed grey literature, too (e.g.
magazines). In contrast, in this study, only peer-reviewed articles are considered, as this format of
knowledge dissemination is deemed to be the 'gold standard' in academia.
The systematic literature review by Agyeiwaah (2019) has a few limitations as well. The
description of her methodology is imprecise. She used the abbreviation "e.g." when listing the
keywords and platforms used (Agyeiwaah, 2019, p. 101). Since this expression, by definition,
indicates a non-exhaustive set of instances, the reader cannot be sure that the keywords and
platforms mentioned are the only ones actually used. Moreover, as she used the abbreviation "i.e."
earlier on the same page (Agyeiwaah, 2019, p. 101), the reader would assume that she is aware of
the difference between these two expressions. The description of her methodology is also
incomplete. Agyeiwaah (2019) specified neither in which field(s) she looked for the keywords nor
whether she looked for them together or separately. Finally, the set of publications resulting from
her search seems implausible. In fact, it is virtually impossible that using a "list of broad key search
terms" (Agyeiwaah, 2019, p. 101), she obtained so few journal articles (n=17).
Overall, this study differs in three respects from the ones reviewed above. First, they only
covered scientific inquiry about overtourism until 2019. Accordingly, the entire the body of
research produced on this subject in 2020 has not been considered in their analysis. This, in turn,
explains the difference in sample size. In fact, while in the four studies it ranged from 15 to 84, in
this one it is expected to lie around 150. Second, the four studies relied on relatively simple
methods. Barbieri da Rosa et al. (2020) conducted a bibliometric analysis, Carvalho et al. (2020)
performed a content analysis, and Veríssimo et al. (2020) carried out both. Building on the latter,
in this study the author will perform a bibliometric analysis and topic modeling on peer-reviewed
publications about overtourism. Third, and most importantly, the objective of the four reviews was
Page 69 of 133
– albeit each with a different focus – to provide an overview of research on overtourism. In contrast,
this study aims to assess the added value of “overtourism”. The differences between the four
studies reviewed in this section and the present one are summarised in Table 5.
Barbieri da Rosa Verissimo et Carvalho et Agyeiwaah Present

et al. (2020) al. (2020) al. (2020) (2019) Study25
Review Bibliometric Systematic literature Mapping literature Systematic literature Bibliometric

Type analysis review review review analysis
Tague-Sutckiffe
Method Tranfield et al.
(1992) and - > >
by (2003)
Garousi (2015)
Keywords "Overtourism" "over-?tourism", "overtourism" and 'list of broad key "over-?tourism"

searched (Boolean operators) "touris(-)?mphobia" variations thereof search terms (e.g.)'
Data
March 2019 June 2019 May-Oct 2019 - May 2021
collected
'e.g. ScienceDirect,
B-on, ProQuest, Scopus,
Databases Scopus, Web of
WOS, Scopus WOS, Scopus Scopus, Web of Science,
searched Science, Google
WOS, Emerald Dimensions
scholar'
Period 'no year limit

1998-2018 → 2019 1997-2019 2016-2020
considered was used'
Articles
n = 24 n = 53 n = 84 n = 15 n ≈ 150
reviewed
Bibliometric Bibliometric
Method Bibliometric Content
analysis, Synthesis analysis, Topic
used analysis analysis
Content analysis modeling
VOSviewer,
Software - Nvivo 12 Plus - VOSviewer, R
Histcite
Table 5: Present vs Previous Studies
25
At the moment (Q1-2021). Elements may be subject to change.
Page 70 of 133
5.2.2 Methodology
The analysis conducted in this study consists of two parts. In the first one (descriptive),
bibliographic metadata (e.g. authorship) will be summarised to map the scientific landscape of
research on overtourism. In addition, topic modeling (Blei, 2012) will be performed on the
abstracts of the identified publications to establish the facets of this kaleidoscopic phenomenon.
The combination of these two methods is not unprecedented, as evidenced – for instance – by the
work of De Battisti et al. (2015) and that of Figuerola et al. (2017). In the second part (inferential),
a citation analysis will be conducted to determine whether overtourism is in fact “old wine in new
bottles” (Dredge, 2017). Knowledge of its origins in academia, in turn, will enable an informed
judgement of whether overtourism research has overcome the shortcomings of its predecessors.
And, what´s more, it will provide a baseline against which to evaluate the “boldness” of this stream
of research.
5.2.2.1 Bibliometrics
In the author´s opinion, the history of bibliometrics is quite intriguing. This term is
generally attributed to Pritchard (1969). Dissatisfied with the term 'statistical bibliography', this
scholar advanced the term 'bibliometrics' - which he defined as "the application of mathematics
and statistical methods to books and other media of communication" (Pritchard, 1969, p. 349). A
few years later, Da Fonseca (1973) remarked that the latter had neglected literature in other
languages. In fact, Otlet (1934) titled one of his sections "Le Livre et la Mesure. Bibliométrie."
(Otlet, 1934, p. 13). Be that as it may, the roots of bibliometrics go back even further. In fact, such
type of analysis can be traced back – albeit under a different name – to the work by Cole and Eales
(1917), who examined documents about animal anatomy between 1543 and 1860 (n=6,436). The
terminological debate does not end here, though. In fact, the two related terms "scientometrics"
and "informetrics" cause further confusion. Suffice it to say, at least for the moment, that while
these terms share some common ground, they are not one and the same (Hood & Wilson, 2001).
A search for bibliometric studies in tourism journals shows that in this field such type of
investigation has only gained momentum in the last few years (2018-2020). Some researchers have
focused on a specific journal, such as Travel and Tourism Marketing (Mulet-Forteza et al., 2018)
and Tourism Geographies (Merigó et al., 2019). Other scholars have concentrated on a particular
Page 71 of 133
topic, such as sustainable tourism (Moyle et al., 2021; Ruhanen et al., 2015) and forecasting (Liu
et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2020). The former investigations are 'journal-focused', whereas the latter
ones are 'theme-focused' (Koseoglu et al., 2016). The bibliometric analysis performed in this study
falls under the last-mentioned category, as it focuses on academic publications about overtourism.
5.2.2.2 Descriptive Part
In the first part of the analysis, the author will examine the identified publications to map
the body of research on overtourism. To the best of the authors knowledge, only Barbieri da Rosa
et al. (2020) and Veríssimo et al. (2020) have conducted a bibliometric analysis about overtourism,
so far. However, they examined the metadata of a relatively small number of papers (n=24 and
n=53, respectively). In this study, both bibliographic data (e.g. authors) and raw text (e.g. abstracts)
will be inspected. Concerning the latter, Capocchi et al. (2019) inferred topics from keywords. In
the author's opinion, this is a bit of a stretch. Therefore, topic modeling (Blei, 2012) will be
performed on the abstracts of the selected publications instead. The reader is redirected to Section
5.1.2.1 for the description of this method. It might be worth mentioning, though, that terms
belonging to the academic jargon, such as 'methodology' and 'findings', will be treated as “junk
words” (Table 10 in Appendix 4).
The choice of limiting the analysis to the abstract of the articles might be questioned. Hence,
it only seems fair to spend a few words on its rationale. In short, the author´s decision was
motivated by the significance of this section. Landes (1951) asserted that “in terms of the market
reached, the abstract is the most important part of the paper” (Landes, 1951, p. 1660). In view of
the plethora of papers published, scholars use it as a screening tool to decide which ones to dedicate
their attention to (Pitkiiz, 1987). Previous research backs this choice, too. For instance, Mazanec
(2017) analysed 858 abstracts published in Annals of Tourism Research between 1975 and 2015.
In addition, Kirilenko and Stepchenkova (2018) examined 8,890 abstracts published in Annals of
Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, and Tourism Management between 1974 and 2017.
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5.2.2.3 Inferential Part
In the second part, the author will conduct a citation analysis of the selected publications
to ascertain whether overtourism is in fact “old wine in new bottles” (Dredge, 2017). While several
scholars have expressed their view on the age of this phenomenon, to the best of the author´s
knowledge, Capocchi et al. (2020) are the only ones who have pursued an empirical investigation
of this matter. However, they examined the bibliographies of a rather small number of papers
(n=29) (Capocchi et al., 2020). Veríssimo et al. (2020) also inspected the bibliographies of selected
documents. While their sample was almost twice as large (n=53), it included articles about both
'over(-)tourism' and 'tourism(-)phobia' (Veríssimo et al., 2020). The present analysis builds on
these two studies, but boasts a larger sample (n=149) and covers a longer period (2017-2020).
On a more technical note, the author will conduct the citation analysis with a dedicated
software. Specifically, the following ones will be considered:
A. Bibexcel (Persson et al., 2009)

B. bibliometrix (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017)26
C. SciMAT (Cobo et al., 2011)
D. VOSViewer (van Eck & Waltman, 2010)
An up-to-date comparison of these, and other, software can be found in Moral-Muñoz et

al. (2020).
The keywords selected for this study are "overtourism" and "over-tourism". Synonyms
were consciously not used for two reasons. First, in the author´s opinion, there is no synonym for
overtourism. In fact, terms such as 'mass tourism' or 'tourism-phobia' have, albeit only slightly,
different meanings. Second, one of the objectives of this study is to determine whether overtourism
26
Package in R.
Page 73 of 133
is "old wine in new bottles" (Dredge, 2017). This can only be achieved by analysing solely the
literature that uses this specific term.
These two keywords were searched for in Scopus and Web of Science. In view of the high
number of duplicates, performing the search in other databases was deemed redundant. The
identified documents were filtered. As the term itself was invented in June 2016 (Ali, 2018),
documents with an earlier publication date came as somewhat of a surprise. However, a brief
inspection revealed the reason for the appearance of such results – that is, the platforms also looked
for the search term without a hyphen, thereby generating irrelevant results. Hence, only documents
published between 2017 and 2020 were kept (Scopus=247, Web of Science=225). Next, the search
was restricted by document type: only articles, reviews, editorials, and other short formats – such
as research notes and letters – were maintained (Scopus=208, Web of Science=189). After that, the
search was limited to documents published in English (Scopus=201, Web of Science=180). The
refined results lists were then exported from Scopus and Web of Science as comma- and tab-
delimited files, respectively.
Next, the two files were imported into Microsoft Excel. Only non-duplicate records were
kept (n=209). Publications from journals that publish in a language other than English were deleted
(n=15), as were those without a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) (n=4). Further, publications that
were not directly related to overtourism were removed (n=41). These included articles that were
completely unrelated to overtourism, such as those in which the expression "over tourism" had
been used. They also included papers that were only partly related to overtourism, such as those
in which one of the two search terms had been marginally mentioned. Thus, the final dataset
consists of 149 documents. The steps of this filtering process are visualised in Figure 22.
Page 74 of 133
Scopus Web of Science
(n = 201) (n = 180)
Records after duplicates removed

(n = 209)
Records screened Records excluded

(n = 209) (n = 19)
Full-text articles Full-text articles

assessed for eligibility excluded, with reason
(n = 190) (n = 41)
Studies included
in synthesis
(n = 149)
Figure 22: PRISMA Flow Diagram

(Moher et al., 2009)
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5.2.4.1 Descriptive Part
An example of the descriptive bibliometric analysis might be the co-authorship network

shown in Figure 23, which was created with VOSviewer (van Eck & Waltman, 2010). This
visualisation allows to rapidly identify teams of scholars researching overtourism. For instance,
Joseph Cheer, Claudio Milano and Marina Novelli constitute such a group. They edited the special
issue 'Overtourism and Tourismphobia' (Milano, Novelli, & Cheer, 2019b) as well as the book
'Overtourism: Excesses Discontents and Measures in Travel and Tourism' (Milano, Cheer, &
Novelli, 2019). In addition, they published an article about degrowth (Milano, Novelli, & Cheer,
2019a). Be that as it may, this is only one example of how such an exploratory visualisation may
help the analyst detect bibliographic patterns. Further analysis would for instance demonstrate that
Hugues Séraphin is the most prolific author (n=10). At the same time, it would show that his
publications are mostly co-authored (Ø = 3,7 authors) and rather short (Ø = 8,3 pages).
Figure 23: Co-Authorship Network27
27
Specifications: network visualization / co-authorship: authors → fractional counting / min docs
= 2 / weights = links.
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An example of the descriptive text analysis could the co-occurrence graph of author
keywords shown in Figure 24, which was also created using VOSviewer (van Eck & Waltman,
2010). The presence of both spelling variants of 'over(-)tourism' highlights the need of specifying
synonyms prior to the analysis. This can easily be done using the thesaurus function in VOSviewer
(see van Eck & Waltman, 2020). For instance, "social carrying capacity" and "tourism carrying
capacity" could be subsumed under "carrying capacity"28.
Figure 24: Co-Occurrence Graph of Author Keywords29
28
Strictly speaking, these terms are not interchangeable. However, if one is only interested in the
relations between overarching concepts, this methodological step is in order.
29
Specifications: overlay visualization / co-occurrence: author keywords → fractional counting /
min. occ. key word: 2 / weights: occurrences & scores: avg. pub. year.
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The colouring in Figure 24 shows the timing of the terms. Thus, this visualisation suggests
that the academic discourse on overtourism has evolved over time. To give an example: both
spelling variants of 'tourism(-)phobia' are shown in violet, whereas 'tourism intensity' is shown in
lime (Figure 24)30. This suggests that scholars dealt first with the conceptualisation and then with
the measurement of overtourism. Such sequence would mirror the evolution of research on tourism
impacts as outlined by Deery et al. (2012). Be that as it may, the nature of the text under scrutiny
calls for the adoption of DTM (Blei & Lafferty, 2006b) or, alternatively, the use of time as covariate
in STM (Roberts et al., 2014).
Finally, while no sample analysis of topic modeling is presented here, a preliminary reading
of the literature suggests the presence of the following topics31:
➢ Carrying capacity (e.g. Bertocchi et al., 2020; Tokarchuk et al., 2020)

➢ Degrowth (e.g. Higgins-Desbiolles et al., 2019; Milano, Novelli, & Cheer, 2019a)
➢ Resident attitudes (e.g. Kuščer & Mihalič, 2019; Muler Gonzalez et al., 2018)
➢ Social media (e.g. Alonso-Almeida et al., 2019; Bourliataux-Lajoinie et al., 2019)
➢ Urban tourism (e.g. Novy, 2019; Novy & Colomb, 2019)
➢ Vacation rentals (e.g. Celata & Romano, 2020; Sarantakou & Terkenli, 2019)
5.2.4.2 Inferential Part
An example of the second part of the analysis might be the co-citation network shown in
Figure 25, which was created with Bibexel (Persson et al., 2009) and Pajek (Batagelj & Mrvar,
2020). This visualisation allows for two comments. First, the presence of older references, such as
Emerson (1976) (Social Exchange Theory), Butler (1980) (Tourism Area Life Cycle), and O'Reilly
(1986) (Tourism Carrying Capacity), lends some weight to the claim that overtourism is indeed
30
The software allows to interactively browse through the graph (van Eck and Waltman, 2020),
which considerably facilitates its interpretation.
31
The expected topics are listed in alphabetical order.
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"old wine in new bottles" (Dredge, 2017). This would be in line with the results of the empirical
investigation by Capocchi et al. (2020) and of the bibliometric analysis by Veríssimo et al. (2020).
Figure 25: Co-Citation Network32
Second, it shows the challenge of dealing with bibliographic data. The presence of
duplicates, such as the literature review by Capocchi et al. (2019), shows that tiny differences in
referencing suffice for the same work to be counted as two separate records. In this case, the
discrepancy lay in the inclusion versus omission of the publication's issue number. Thus, it seems
that after all, “the devil is in the detail”. Since the author expects to analyse 6,000+ references,
'harmonising' them will be a resource-intensive task. Cobo et al. (2011) noted the inaccuracy of
data extracted from bibliographic platforms. Accordingly, they considered the preparation of the
data to be a task of paramount importance (Cobo et al., 2011).
32
Co-citation network: n > 4, Layout: Kamada-Kawai (Free).
Page 79 of 133
5.2.5 Limitations
Having critically reviewed several studies, it only seems fair to acknowledge the own
imperfections. It is probably best to start by addressing "the elephant in the room" – that is, the
fact that the author only searched for 'over(-)tourism'. While the adoption of only one keyword
may raise some eyebrows, this was consciously done to identify the body of research using this
particular term. Future research could collect academic articles employing related – yet distinct –
terms, such as 'tourismphobia' or 'touristification', and compare them to the ones using
'over(-)tourism'. The filtering process was relatively strict, too. In fact, publications in other
languages, such as Spanish and German, were excluded. Future research could make a comparison
between scholarly research in different languages. Finally, as suggested by Mazanec (2017), it
would be really intriguing to compare rejected manuscripts against published articles about
overtourism. What could the body of knowledge on this subjects have looked like? Would it have
advanced our understanding further or would it have left us "none the wiser" (Ap, 1990, p. 615)?
Page 80 of 133
5.3 Study III
The purpose of this section is to show the limitations of allegedly 'objective' and 'granular'
indicators. To this end, a thorough analysis of (over-)tourism in Vienna will be conducted. Bearing
in mind that “les chiffres absolus ne disent pas grande chose” (Markos, 1949, p. 132), one-
dimensional measures, such as overnights, will not be discussed at length. However, for the sake
of completeness, they are mentioned in Table 11 in Appendix 5Error! Reference source not
found.. That said, this section is structured according to the classification by De La Calle-Vaquero
et al. (2020) (Table 6).
Category (Sample) Indicators
Magnitude absolute number of arrivals and overnights
(average) growth rate of arrivals and overnights,

Dynamics
population decline at destination
Seasonality highest / lowest month, length of high season
Intensity tourism intensity
Density tourism density
Table 6: Indicators by Category
5.3.1.1 Magnitude
The first two indicators are arrivals and overnights. In 2019, Vienna recorded 7.926.768
arrivals33 and 17.604.573 overnights34 (TourMIS, n.d.–b). By themselves, these one-dimensional
statistics are not particularly meaningful. Or better said, they “have only a comparative value” (De
33
Arrivals in all forms of paid accommodation in city area only
34
Bednights in all forms of paid accommodation in city area only
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La Calle-Vaquero et al., 2020, p. 309). According to the latest benchmarking report by European
Cities Marketing (2020), Vienna ranks eighth in terms of total overnights. A direct comparison
with the cities preceding it would be misleading, though. In fact, it would be like comparing apples
and oranges – or, rather, watermelons and cherries. For instance, with a population of 3.664.371
inhabitants and an area of 891,1 km2 (Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, n.d.), Berlin is roughly
twice as big as Vienna. Hence, two-dimensional measures ought to be considered.
5.3.1.2 Dynamics
In this subsection, the temporal evolution of one-dimensional indicators is mainly

presented. The underlying reason is to follow the logic of De La Calle-Vaquero et al. (2020), who
argue that taking into consideration this aspect enhances the informativeness of elementary
measures. Accordingly, the temporal evolution of two-dimensional indicators is presented in their
respective subsections.
Concerning demand, the number of arrivals has grown by 81% and that of overnights by
79% between 2009 and 2019 (TourMIS, n.d.–b). The average yearly growth rate stands at roughly
6% for both statistics (TourMIS, n.d.–b). Interestingly, this figure is higher than the one Visentin
and Bertocchi (2019) found for Venice between 2009 and 2017 (4,4%). Another indicator is the
growth of air transport (Peeters et al., 2018), which is computed as the yearly percentage increase
of air passengers. In the present study, the “passengers carried (arrival)” figure35 (Eurostat, n.d.)
was used to calculate this measure. The number of people transported to Vienna International
Airport by plane in 2019 (15.776.153) increased by 75,1% with respect to 2009 (9.009.250). The
average yearly growth rate over this period is 5,9%.
Regarding supply, the number of hotels and pensions grew from 400 in 2009 to 422 in 2019
(MA 23, n.d.–d). This corresponds to an increase of 5,5%. The number of beds rose from 50.911
in 2009 to 68.200 in 2019 (MA 23, n.d.–b), which represent an increase of 34%. These two
different growth rates suggest the opening of large properties. This is also evidenced by the average
number of beds per hotel, which went from 127,3 in 2009 and to 161,6 in 2019. Since several
authors have associated overtourism with Airbnb (e.g. Martín Martín et al., 2018; Sarantakou &
35
Figure excludes direct transit passengers.
Page 82 of 133
Terkenli, 2019), examining the evolution of vacation rentals would be worthwhile, too. Having
said that, since this type of accommodation is relatively recent, the analysis possibilities are rather
limited. Indeed, for Vienna, data is only available as of 2015 (Inside Airbnb, n.d.).
Finally, Visentin and Bertocchi (2019) identified population shrinkage as a symptom of
overtourism. More precisely, they noted that the centre's population has decreased by 74% between
1950 and 201536. In Vienna, the population increased from 1.627.566 in 1961 to 1.714.227 in 2011
(MA 23, n.d.–a). This represents an overall increase of 5,3%. At first sight, this figure seems more
reassuring than that for Venice. At a closer look, however, considerable differences between the
districts can be detected. For instance, the population of the 1st district – the city’s touristic hotspot
– dropped from 32.243 in 1961 to 16.374 in 2011 (MA 23, n.d.–a). This corresponds to a decrease
of 49%. In contrast, the population of the 22nd district – an area of expansion – rose from 57.137
in in 1961 to 161.419 in 2011 (MA 23, n.d.–a). This marks an increase of 183%.
5.3.1.3 Seasonality
Seasonality has been given a great deal of attention by tourism researchers. Guevara Manzo
et al. (2017) and Peeters et al. (2018) both adopted air transport statistics to this end. Specifically,
they computed the ratio of the peak over the trough month in terms of 'arriving seats' (Guevara
Manzo et al., 2017) and 'passengers' (Peeters et al., 2018). As mentioned above, in the present
study, the “passengers carried (arrival)” figure (Eurostat, n.d.) has been used instead. For 2019,
dividing the top (August) over the bottom (January) month yields a value of 1,76.
In the author´s opinion, however, it is not so much the severity of the temporal
concentration but rather its duration that matters in urban destinations. For instance, Visentin and
Bertocchi (2019) observed that 11 of 12 months are regarded as high season in Venice. Accordingly,
they argued that the adverse effects of tourism “affect the entire historical city unrelentingly
throughout the year” (Visentin & Bertocchi, 2019, p. 34). In the case of Vienna, arrivals and
overnights were above average in 8 of 12 months in 2019 (Figure 26). Such unabated tourism
36
To be exact, they only mention absolute numbers. The percentage change has been calculated
by the author on that basis.
Page 83 of 133
pressure most likely generates a feeling of restlessness and, consequently, a sense of impotence in
the local population.
2.000.000
1.750.000
1.500.000
1.250.000
n - Arrivals
1.000.000
n - Overnights
750.000
Ø - Arrivals
500.000 Ø - Overnights
250.000
Figure 26: Arrivals and Overnights by Month in 2019
5.3.1.4 Intensity
One of the two most popular indicators of tourism pressure is tourism intensity. According
to Eurostat, it is computed as the number of overnights with respect to the destination’s population
(Kotzeva et al., 2019, p. 151). However, some variations do exist. For instance, Guevara Manzo et
al. (2017) replaced overnights with arrivals for this measure. In the present study, the conventional
calculation of this indicators has been adopted. In 2019, Vienna had a high intensity (9,3)
(Appendix 5). A comparison of this value with the results by Peeters et al. (2018) highlights its
extreme. The intensity figure lies slightly below the upper threshold of the fourth quintile (9,58)
(Peeters et al., 2018). Given the importance of temporal evolution, it is worth noting that tourism
intensity rose from 5,9 in 2009 to 9,3 in 2019. This represents an increase of 58% (Appendix 5).
Furthermore, several authors have linked overtourism to budget airlines (e.g. Dodds &
Butler, 2019; Visentin & Bertocchi, 2019). Thus, it might be worthwhile determining the intensity
of low-cost travel. The share of passengers traveling with budget airlines to and from Vienna
International Airport grew from 23,7% in 2018 to 31,6% in 2019 (Flughafen Wien AG, 2020,
Page 84 of 133
p. 35). This constitutes an increase of 33,3%. Thus, a qualitative analysis of air transport seems to
be desirable.
5.3.1.5 Density
The other most popular indicator of tourism pressure is tourism density. According to
Eurostat, it is computed as the number of overnights with respect to the destination’s surface
(Kotzeva et al., 2019, p. 148). Here, too some variations do exist. For instance, Guevara Manzo et
al. (2017) restricted the surface of the destination to the one containing the twenty most popular
sights for this measure. In the present study, the conventional calculation of this indicator has been
adopted. In 2019, Vienna had a very high density (42.434) (Appendix 5). Here, too, contrasting
this value with the results by Peeters et al. (2018) highlights its extreme. The density figure lies
somewhat above the upper threshold of the fifth quintile (37.290) (Peeters et al., 2018). Moreover,
tourism intensity rose from 23.725 in 2009 to 42.434 in 2019. This represents an increase of 79%
(Appendix 5). The fact that this growth rate is much larger than that of tourism intensity (58%) can
easily be explained by the fact that – unlike the population – the surface of a destination remains
constant.
5.3.1.6 Others
Finally, Peeters et al. (2018) also considered the proximity to cruise harbours and airports
as well as World Heritage Sites (WHS) as potential catalysts for overtourism. Vienna has one
harbour (Schiffstation Wien) and is close to two airports (Vienna International Airport; Bratislava
Airport)37. Technically, there are only two WHSs in a radius of 30 km: the historic centre and the
complex of Schönbrunn. However, three other sites are relatively near: the cultural landscapes of
Neusiedlersee (≈50km) and Wachau (≈70km) as well as the railway in Semmering (≈80km)38
(UNESCO, n.d.). Furthermore, it shall be mentioned that the city centre was placed on the 'List of
World Heritage in Danger' in July 2017 because of the renovation project of the Hotel
37
Strictly speaking, both airports lie beyond the boundaries of the city.
38
Approximate beeline distances estimated using luftlinie.org.
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InterContinental 39 (UNESCO, 2017). Drawing on the opinion of the former director of the
UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Francesco Bandarin, the director of the Vienna Tourist Board,
Norbert Kettner, argued that the revocation of such status would not have major repercussions on
a mature destination like Vienna (Wien Tourismus, 2016). To be sure, his statement made some
waves. However, the 6% (n= 970.767) and 7% (n= 1.121.076) increase in overnights in 2018 and
2019, respectively, suggest that he may have been right after all.
In conclusion, the author would like to make a final remark. As mentioned in the theoretical
part earlier (Section 3.3), the measurement of overtourism is "old wine in new bottles". Having
said that, in his research, the author uncovered a few rather aged indices – such as Defert’s tourist
function index (Defert, 1954). Rather surprisingly, though, these have not been mentioned in any
of the publications reviewed earlier (Figure 16). At the same time, they seem to have found some
adoption by scholars in South-Eastern Europe (e.g. Marković et al., 2017; Štefko et al., 2018). The
reasons for this remain unclear.
5.3.1.7 Granularity: Fool's Gold
Towards the end of their chapter on overtourism measurement, Peeters et al. (2018) call for
more granular data. Specifically, they assert that:
“…it is advisable to develop a guideline for tourism statistics to be gathered at the

NUTS 3 level because the NUTS 2 level is too coarse to successfully develop such an
early warning tool…” (Peeters et al., 2018, p. 78)
In the particular case of Vienna, the surface (414,82 km2) and population (1.911.191) of
NUTS-2 (AT13) and NUTS-3 (AT130) are the same (Statistik Austria, 2020). Hence, a shift from
one level to the other yields no additional information. Furthermore, Weber et al. (2019) affirm
that “disaggregated data is needed that includes the spatial and temporal distribution of visitors”
39
More about this here: www.heumarkt-neu.at.
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(Weber et al., 2019, p. 94). Following these calls for finer-grained analyses, in this subsection the
author would like to offer a word of caution to scholars wishing to act on these exhortations.
5.3.1.7.1 District Level ('Bezirk)
Visentin and Bertocchi (2019) analysed the state of tourism in Venice on district level.
Following their example, selected indicators have been computed on district level ('Bezirk') for
Vienna. Table 7 shows the three districts with the highest values for tourism density and intensity.
The scores of each district (n=23) can be found in Table 12 in Appendix 6Error! Reference source
not found.. Rather unsurprisingly, the 1st district ranks first. The rest of the podium is not jaw-
dropping either. In fact, the 7th and 6th districts occupy the second and third place, respectively.
Area Tourism Density Tourism Intensity
Vienna (overall) 42.434 9,3
1st district 1.087.441 191,3
7th district 752.353 37,5
6th district 498.779 22,8
Vienna (median) 55.064 6,1

Table 7: Indicators by District
Indicators could be mapped for better interpretation. For instance, the density of vacation
rentals by district can be shown with a 'box map'40 (Figure 27). The 6th district has the highest
number of listings per square kilometre (≈181), closely followed by the 6th (≈172) and the 5th
(≈168) district. The 4th (≈149), 1st (≈135) and the 8th (≈133) district follow at some distance. The
scores of each district are provided in Appendix 6 and a methodological note on the calculation of
these figures is offered in Appendix 7. Bearing in mind how this density figure is computed, it
comes as no surprise that its upper quartile is dominated by rather small districts (Ø = 1,8 km2). At
40
i.e. spatial equivalent of a box plot (Anselin, 2020).
Page 87 of 133
the same time, this leaves one wondering what may lie behind the seemingly unremarkable state
of larger district (e.g. 2nd district). This will be examined in the next subsection.
Figure 27: Box Map - Airbnbs per km2 by District (14th Jan 2020)
5.3.1.7.2 Census District ('Zählbezirk')
At first sight, the results between tourism density and tourism intensity are rather similar
(Appendix 6). However, on closer examination, a few dissimilarities spring to the eye. For instance,
the 2nd district ranks fifth in terms of intensity (20,9) but only tenth in terms of density (113.836)
(Appendix 6). This can easily be explained by its relatively large area (19,2km 2) (MA 18, n.d.).
Intrigued by such disparities, one could go a step further and try to compute indicators per census
district ('Zählbezirk'). The curious researcher will soon be disappointed, though. In fact, traditional
tourism statistics are not available at such level of granularity in the case of Vienna. The reason
for this is that in some census districts there are so few properties that one could theoretically figure
out which one the statistics refer to – and this, in turn, would violate the Federal Statistics Act for
confidentiality reasons (J. Urlesberger, personal communication, March 23, 2020).
However, all is not lost. In fact, it is still possible to calculate 'non-traditional' indicators on
such level, albeit with some effort. The number of vacation rentals per census district is an example
thereof (Figure 28). The step-by-step description of how these figures were calculated can be found
in Appendix 7. This analysis yields interesting results. For instance, the 2nd district has the highest
Page 88 of 133
absolute number of listings (n≈569). With a surface of approximately 19,2 km2, it only has a
density of 29,6 Airbnbs per km2, though. Consequently, it did not stand out in the analysis
conducted on district level earlier (Figure 27). In contrast, the analysis on census district level
shows considerable variations within districts. For instance, in the 2nd district, the density of
Airbnbs ranges from 0 (Zählbezirk 210) to 2,3 (Zählbezirk 207) listings per hectare41. A look at
the map helps explain this intra-district variation. The former area is the port ('Hafen'), whereas
the latter one is an area that has been developing recently ('Stuwerviertel').
89 listings
≈ 2,3
38 hectares
Figure 28: Box Map – Airbnbs per ha by Census District (14th January 2020)
In sum, this small exercise demonstrates that reportedly 'granular' analyses may be fool's
gold. Accordingly, tourism professionals are advised not let themselves be blinded by the apparent
lustre of such findings. Rather, bearing in mind that "all that glitters is not gold", they are
encouraged to scratch beneath the surface. In fact, since overtourism occurs in specific places,
spatial analyses have to be conducted at the most detailed level possible – as permitted by law. To
the best of the author's knowledge, a state-of-the-art example in this regard is the 'tourism
observatory' by the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
41
The scale was shifted to hectare, as square kilometre would not be very meaningful at such
level of analysis.
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5.3.1.8 Shifting the Focus
To be sure, one could now attempt to combine some of the above-mentioned measures into
a compound index, as attempted by Amore et al. (2020). However, such focus on numbers might
cause one to not see the wood for the trees – that is, one might easily get lost in details and become
oblivious to the fact that, after all, these are only numbers. More than half a century ago, the
founding father of market psychology, Bernt Spiegel, asserted that market reality ultimately boils
down to consumer perception. To be more precise, he wrote:
“Die Realität im sozialen Feld ist alleine das Phänomenale, das unmittelbar
Angetroffene; nicht aber, jedenfalls nicht allein, die nackte objektive Beschaffenheit, die
uns im Leben wohl kaum einmal völlig gesondert begegnet.“ (Spiegel, 1961, p. 30)42
It follows that these allegedly 'objective' indicators are only half the story. Accordingly, the
next logical step would be to relate these indicators to the subjective perception of tourism by
residents. After all, overtourism has been defined as “the subjective belief of residents that there
are too many visitors” (Rejón-Guardia et al., 2020, p. 236). Thus, one could for instance compare
the density of vacation rentals in a particular district with the perception thereof by its inhabitants43.
This would allow bridging the gap between the objective and the subjective dimensions of
overtourism. However, in the case of the resident survey of the Vienna Tourist Board, quotas have
only been set with respect to age and gender (Wien Tourismus, 2020), wherefore the number of
responses fluctuates a great deal across districts. For example, in 2019, 12,6% of the respondents
(n=459) were living in the 22nd district and only 0,9% (n=32) of them were living in the 1st district
(Figure 29). Such variation makes statistical – let alone meaningful – comparisons difficult.
42
Quoting Spiegel (1961) has been an arbitrary choice. In fact, for the distinction between
perception and reality, the author could also have cited other 'authors', such as Plato (Allegory of the Cave)
and Kant (Noumenal vs Phenomenal).
43
e.g. with data from the resident survey of the Vienna Tourist Board.
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459
363
348
270
215
185 192 198
169 165
137
109 110 114
81 95 109
70 63 78
48 47
32
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Figure 29: Number of Responses by District in 2019 (n=3.657)
5.3.2 Methodology
5.3.2.1 The Origins
In 2018, the term overtourism was on everyone's lips. It was even in the running for that
year's “Word of the Year” (Oxford University Press, n.d.). Having learnt that “mostly it is loss that
teaches us the worth of things”(Schopenhauer), when seeing the extensive news coverage of
protests against tourism, the author wondered what residents would actually do without it. Thus,
upon his recommendation, the Vienna Tourist Board included the following two questions in their
ongoing survey of resident attitudes towards tourism:
- How would you like the city without tourists? (0-100)

- And how would you imagine life and the city without tourists? (text)
At that time, the idea of a deserted city was an unimaginable scenario. This year, the
outbreak of Covid-19 turned this dystopian vision into reality. Nevertheless, since “in the middle
of difficulty lies opportunity” (Einstein), upon the author's recommendation, the Vienna Tourist
Board then asked residents about their experience of the city (and the life) without tourism.
Specifically, the two questions above were altered as follows:
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- How did you like the city without tourists? (0-100)
- How did you experience life and the city without tourists? (text)
This way, a comparison between the hypothetical and actual loss of tourism can be made.
Moreover, upon recommendation of a senior employee of the Vienna Tourist Board, respondents
had to answer the last question in form of a post card. That person, in turn, had been inspired by
the work of Tussyadiah and Miller (2020), who adopted the 'letters from the future' method. In
short, the idea behind the adoption of this method was to elicit richer responses. Finally, the post
card format was adopted both with and without sample text in the third and fourth quarter of 2020,
respectively (Appendix 8).
5.3.2.2 Hypotheses
In this section, the research framework and its underlying hypotheses are presented. The
analysis will consist of two 'blocks'. In the first one, a comparison is made between residents'
imagination of the city without tourists in the second quarters of 2018 and 2019 (Figure 30-A).
Tourism has continued to grow between these two periods (July 2018 - March 2019), as evidenced,
for instance, by the average monthly increase of 7,7% in the number of overnights44 with respect
to the previous year (TourMIS, n.d.–b). This, in turn, is then reflected in measures of tourism
pressure. Tourism intensity, for example, was 8,6% higher compared to the previous year
(TourMIS, n.d.–b). Hence, it seems reasonable to assume that as 'objective' indicators of tourism
pressure increase, the outlook of a city without tourists becomes more appealing. Thus, the first
hypothesis reads as follows:
H1: As 'objective' measures of overtourism increase, the

prospect of a city without tourism becomes more appealing.
44
Bednights in all forms of paid accommodation in city area only.
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In the second block, the imagination of the city without tourists by respondents in the third
and fourth quarters of 2019 is compared with the experience thereof by respondents in the third
and fourth quarters of 2020 (Figure 30-B). Here, the author assumes that once residents realise
what they have lost, they appreciate what they had. More formally:
H2: Residents' hypothetical liking is higher than

their actual liking of the city without tourism.
The analysis of the numerical indications by the respondents (0 →100) will be

complemented by an examination of their answers to the open-ended questions (text). Specifically,
these will be examined by means of topic modeling. However, unlike in Study I, it would not be
prudent to use STM here. In fact, Yan et al. (2013) identified sparsity as an obstacle to the
application of traditional topic models (e.g. LDA) to brief documents (e.g. tweets). They ascribed
this to the fact that the traditional algorithms operate at the document level. Accordingly, they
developed an alternative model that generates topics from pairs of words in the entire corpus. They
named this the 'Biterm Topic Model' (BTM) (Yan et al., 2013). This algorithm is implemented in
the BTM package (Wijffels, 2020a) in R. The presence vs absence of the sample text in the postcard
will be taken into consideration during this analysis.
Figure 30 visualizes the two 'blocks' of the analysis. The answers given last year (2020)
need to be taken with a grain of salt, though. In fact, external circumstances, such as the 'hard'
lockdown in November 2020, might have distorted the results. To the extent possible, aspects like
this will be considered in the analysis.
Figure 30: Analysis Workflow
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The data under scrutiny was collected in form of an online survey by Manova GmbH on
behalf of Wien Tourismus. The ‘accessible population’ (Trochim & Donnelly, 2006) consisted of
people residing in Vienna aged between 18 and 70. ‘Proportional quota sampling’ (Trochim &
Donnelly, 2006) was adopted by age and gender. The collected data was cleaned and weighted by
age, gender, district, and education (Wien Tourismus, 2020). Figure 31 provides an overview of
the responses by quarters and years.
1000
912 915 910 918 920
900 871 865 873
851
800
709
700
605
600
511
500
Closed
400
Open
300
200
100
0
Q2 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q3 Q4
2018 2019 2019 2020
Imagination vs Imagination Imagination vs Perception
Figure 31: Responses by Quarters and Years45
45 Q3-2020 is about a third smaller than the other quarters due to a mishap on the part of the
market research company.
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5.3.4.1 Closed Questions
For the purposes of this sample analysis, responses to the closed question were averaged
by quarter. The comparison between the imagined liking of the city without tourism in the second
quarters of 2018 and 2019 is rather unspectacular. In fact, this value only increased by 11% (Figure
32). In contrast, the comparison between the imagined and experienced liking of the city without
tourism in the third and fourth quarters of 2019 and 2020 is striking. This value increased by 76%
and 65%, respectively (Figure 32). This preliminary result suggests a rejection of H2.
70
63,2
59
60
50
40 36 35,8
34,1
30,8
30
20
10
0
Q2 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q3 Q4
2018 2019 2019 2020
Imagination vs Imagination Imagination vs Experience
Figure 32: Average Liking of the City without Tourism
5.3.4.2 Open Questions
For the purposes of this sample analysis, the responses to the open-ended question in the
second quarter of 2018 (n=851) were examined. The data was pre-processed with the tm package
(Feinerer et al., 2008). Words that indicate a negation were consciously retained (e.g. 'nicht'), as
Covid-19 is about the absence of 'things' (e.g. 'nicht überlaufen'). The text was then annotated with
Page 95 of 133
the udpipe package (Wijffels, 2020b). A pre-trained model was used for this (i.e. german-hdt)46.
Finally, a Biterm Topic Model was performed with five topics using the BTM package (Wijffels,
2020a). This being a demonstrative exercise, special attention was paid neither to the number nor
to the evaluation of topics.
Figure 33: Sample BTM
A brief look at the graph (Figure 33) suggests that the BTM delivers what it promises.
Indeed, it is safe to say that the topics are more interpretable than they would have been if generated
with traditional algorithms – even more so considering the limited length of the answers (Ø ≈ 7
words). Topic 1 includes three frequently used adjectives: empty ('leer'), quiet ('ruhig'), and boring
('langweilig')47. Respondents seem to be well aware of what would go missing without tourism.
Topic 2 mentions the economic aspect ('fehlen', 'einnahmequellen') and topic 3 mentions the
reduced offering ('weniger', 'Angebot'). Interestingly, topic 4 could be interpreted as almost
suggesting that tourism is part of the Viennese DNA. A closer examination of this topic is desirable.
46
Information about this model can be found here.
47
This is because the author set background=TRUE when building the model.
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Nevertheless, respondents also appear to see some benefit in the absence of tourism. Topic 5
mentions more housing space ('mehr', 'Wohnraum'). Thus, overall, Figure 33 suggests that while
residents see the advantages of tourism, they are not completely blind to its disadvantages, either.
At this point, the reader might be perplexed by the dissonance between the scores of the
closed-ended and the text of the open-ended questions. In fact, the high liking of the city without
tourism in the third and fourth quarters of 2020 (Figure 32) stands in stark contrast to the awareness
of this sector's benefits displayed in the second quarter of 2018 (Figure 33). This incongruence
cannot be left uncommented.
On one hand, the results in Figure 32 suggest that residents enjoy having the city to
themselves. This seems plausible. In fact, after a decade of unabated growth48, tourism in Vienna
was at its record high in 201949. It only seems fair that locals breathe a sigh of relief when getting
a break from such 'tour de force'. On the other hand, the results in Figure 33 indicate that the
downsides of tourism's success have made themselves felt. This, in turn, begs the question of how
the attitude of residents will develop in the long run. Will rising unemployment rates change their
mind? Perhaps not right away. Yet, in the author's opinion, at the latest when the façades of the
city's iconic buildings start crumbling, their enthusiasm will fade in favour of regret.
5.3.5 Limitations
Like most studies, this one is not without its limitations either. To begin, the respondents'
answers might have been influenced by a myriad of other factors. This could especially have been
the case in 2020. In fact, the consequences of the pandemic (e.g. sudden unemployment) as well
as the measures adopted to counter them (e.g. 'hard' lockdown) may, to some extent, have distorted
the results. In addition, the critical reader may view the open-ended questions as “double-barreled”
(Babbie, 2008, pp. 273–275).
48
Average yearly growth rate of arrivals and overnights ≈ 6%.
49
Arrivals = 7.926.768; Overnights = 17.604.573.
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6 Conclusion
To sum up, in this manuscript, the author has offered the reader a comprehensive glimpse
of what their journey into the rise and fall of overtourism will look like.
In Study I, the analysis of newspaper articles will show how overtourism has been
portrayed in the news. The use topic modeling will allow traveling beyond the light of the known
into the darkness of the yet unknown themes of this discourse. Moreover, the corroboration of the
discoveries with other text mining techniques will take one more brick off the iron curtain
separating inductive and deductive approaches.
In Study II, the analysis of journal articles will map the landscape of research on
overtourism. The citation analysis will then determine the roots of this phenomenon, thereby
contributing to the debate about its novelty with empirical evidence. In addition, evaluating the
usefulness of overtourism research will allow a critical reflection on tourism scholarship.
In Study III, the Pindaric flight to its diametrical opposite – “undertourism” – will bring
the reader back to the present. Understanding the limitations of the objective and granular
indicators of tourism pressure gives some food for thought on what is worth measuring. Most
importantly, though, insights into the residents´ experience of their destination without tourism
will yield information that is essential for shaping travel and tourism in a sustainable manner.
Page 98 of 133
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8 Appendices
8.1 Appendix 1
Limited Use Prevalence of Loose Geo.

Publication
of Theory Quant. Methods Relevance
Deery et al., 2012 ✓
Nunkoo et al., 2013 ✓ ✓
Sharpley, 2014 ✓ ✓ ✓
Almeida García et al., 2015 ✓ ✓
Hadinejad et al., 2019 ✓ ✓

Table 8: Reviews about Residents Attitudes and Tourism Impacts, Aspects
8.2 Appendix 2
Figure 34: Potential Relationships between Crowding and Satisfaction

(Wagar, 1964, p. 7)
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8.3 Appendix 3
Category Outlet Quality Level Articles
The Guardian Morning Quality 44

Guardian
The Observer Sunday Quality 2
The Independent - 93
Independent
i-Independent Print Morning Quality 20
Financial Times Financial Times Morning Quality 33
The Times Morning Quality 28
Times The Sunday Times Sunday Quality 33
thetimes.co.uk - 43
The Daily Telegraph Morning Quality 48
Telegraph The Sunday Telegraph Sunday Quality 17
telegraph.co.uk - 241
Table 9: Distribution of News Articles (n=602)
8.4 Appendix 4
Junk Words
Paper, Article, Study, Purpose, Design, Methodology,

Approach, Findings, Research, Limitations, Implications,
Originality, Value
Table 10: Junk Words
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8.5 Appendix 5
Dynamics
Category Indicator Change
2019 2009
Arrivals 7.926.768 4.385.529 +81%
Overnights 17.604.573 17.604.573 +79%

Magnitude
Hotels 422 400 +6%
Beds 68.200 50.911 +34%
highest / lowest month 1,7 (1,9) 2,0 (2,2) -

Seasonality
months above average 8 (8) 6 (6) -
Tourism intensity 9,3 5,9 +58%
Intensity Share of budget travel 31,6% - -
Airbnbs per hotel 17,3 - -
Tourism density 42.434 23.725 +79%

Density
Airbnbs per km2 17,6 - -
World heritage sites 2 2 -
Others Airports 1 1 -
Cruise harbour 1 1 -
Table 11: Indicators for the City of Vienna, 2009-201950
50
Figures and calculations available upon request as separate Excel file.
Page 130 of 133

8.6 Appendix 6
Tourism Tourism Airbnbs Airbnbs

District Density Intensity per km2 per Hotel
(2019)51 (2019)52 (2020) (2019-2020)
1. Innere Stadt 1.087.441 191,3 134,9 4,9
2. Leopoldstadt 113.836 20,9 29,6 13,5
3. Landstraße 237.836 19,2 68,4 16,9
4. Wieden 442.878 23,6 149,3 13,9
5. Margareten 303.480 11,0 167,5 33,7
6. Mariahilf 498.779 22,8 181,4 13,2
7. Neubau 752.353 37,5 172,9 9,6
8. Josefstadt 487.177 20,9 133,0 6,3
9. Alsergrund 201.391 14,2 125,0 13,3
10. Favoriten 57.613 9,0 9,8 10,4
11. Simmering 13.010 2,9 2,8 8,3
12. Meidling 28.473 2,4 25,7 26,0
13. Hietzing 7.682 5,4 1,2 5,0
14. Penzing 14.255 5,2 3,4 10,4
15. Rudolfsheim-F. 249.114 12,6 103,4 22,5
16. Ottakring 26.838 2,2 26,7 33,1
17. Hernals 30.717 6,1 15,6 25,4
18. Währing 4.145 0,5 22,1 140,0
19. Döbling 8.248 2,8 3,8 11,9
20. Brigittenau 55.064 3,6 42,2 48,2
21. Floridsdorf 1.254 0,3 0,8 9,3
22. Donaustadt 6.842 3,7 1,2 7,4
23. Liesing 2.344 0,7 0,7 2,6
Table 12: Indicators on District Level
51
= Overnights (MA 23 (n.d.–c) / Area (MA 18 (n.d.)
52
= Overnights (MA 23 (n.d.–c) / Population (Statistik Austria and MA 23 (n.d.)
Page 131 of 133

8.7 Appendix 7
The initial dataset consisted of 13.157 observations. First, the dataset was restricted to
listings of entire apartments (8.743). Second, it was limited to listings with at least one review in
the last year (6.632). Third, and last, only listings with a precise location were kept (5.343). This
last step was taken, as Airbnb data is not entirely accurate. Indeed, its anonymisation entails a
degree of inaccuracy of up to 150 metres as well as the dispersal of rentals in the same edifice to
the nearby environment (Inside Airbnb, n.d.). In sum, the dataset was reduced by 59%. The number
of listings per district was calculated in R (R Core Team, 2020) and that per census district in QGIS
(QGIS Development Team, 2020). These figures were then attached to the shapefile of the district
(MA 41, n.d.) and that of the census district (MA 21, n.d.) boundaries, respectively. Finally, the
calculation of density figures (raw rate) and the corresponding visualisations (box map) were
performed directly in GeoDa (Anselin et al., 2006).
8.8 Appendix 8
Figure 35: Postcard with Sample Text
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Figure 36: Postcard without Sample Text
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“The Rise and Fall of Overtourism”

Sebastian Ferrari, MSc.

Modul University Vienna

PhD Proposal Manuscript

Prof. Dr. Josef A. Mazanec

Prof. Dr. Karl Wöber

2.1 Dictionary Entries ............................................................................................. 13

2.2 Industry Reports ................................................................................................ 14

2.3 Academic Sources ............................................................................................. 14

2.4 TourMIS 2019 ................................................................................................... 16

2.5 Final Remarks ................................................................................................... 18

3.1 Mass Media ....................................................................................................... 20

3.1.1 Agenda-Setting ...................................................................................................................... 20

3.1.2 Framing ................................................................................................................................. 25

3.1.3 Mass Media in Tourism Research ......................................................................................... 28

3.2 Tourism and Leisure ......................................................................................... 29

3.2.1 Historical Excursus ............................................................................................................... 30

3.2.2 Resident Attitudes / Tourism Impacts ................................................................................... 31

3.2.3 (Tourism) Carrying Capacity ................................................................................................ 37

3.3 Overtourism Measurement................................................................................ 43

3.3.1 State of the Art ...................................................................................................................... 43

5 Empirical Part ........................................................................................................... 51

5.1 Study I ............................................................................................................... 51

5.1.1 Rationale for this Study ......................................................................................................... 51

5.1.2 Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 53

5.1.3 Data Collection...................................................................................................................... 61

5.1.4 Preliminary Results ............................................................................................................... 62

5.2 Study II.............................................................................................................. 68

5.2.1 Rationale for this Study ......................................................................................................... 68

5.2.2 Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 71

5.2.3 Data Collection...................................................................................................................... 73

5.2.4 Preliminary Results ............................................................................................................... 76

5.2.5 Limitations ............................................................................................................................ 80

5.3 Study III ............................................................................................................ 81

5.3.1 Rationale for this Study ......................................................................................................... 81

5.3.2 Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 91

5.3.3 Data Collection...................................................................................................................... 94

5.3.4 Preliminary Results ............................................................................................................... 95

5.3.5 Limitations ............................................................................................................................ 97

8 Appendices .............................................................................................................. 128

8.1 Appendix 1 ...................................................................................................... 128

8.2 Appendix 2 ...................................................................................................... 128

8.3 Appendix 3 ...................................................................................................... 129

8.4 Appendix 4 ...................................................................................................... 129

8.5 Appendix 5 ...................................................................................................... 130

8.6 Appendix 6 ...................................................................................................... 131

8.7 Appendix 7 ...................................................................................................... 132

8.8 Appendix 8 ...................................................................................................... 132

AIEST International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism

APA American Psychological Association

CEO Chief Executive Officer

Covid-19 Coronavirus disease 2019

CTM Correlated Topic Model

DOI Digital Object Identifier

DTM Dynamic Topic Model

LAC Limits of Acceptable Change

LDA Latent Dirichlet Allocation

NAS Network Agenda-Setting Model

NUTS Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics

SET Social Exchange Theory

STM Structural Topic Model

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization