摘要：Tourism has been widely used in recent years as a replacementfor traditional forms of the economy in peripheralareas. At the same time it has become recognised thatsustainable tourism planning and development is neededin order to maximise positive and minimize negative impactsof tourism within communities. The views of thehost community should also be taken into account inplanning and development if the tourism industry aims tobe sustainable. The purpose of this study is to examine theopinions of the key persons (officials and councillors) andthe entrepreneurs towards tourism and other industriesas a tool for regional development in four municipalitiesin North-Eastern Finland. The case study illustrates thatthe public and private sector actors generally had a highlyfavourable attitude towards the development of tourism,but they did not usually see tourism as the only industryto support. There are differences in attitudes towards thedevelopment of tourism and other industries betweenmunicipalities which can be explained by community-levelfactors, such as number of tourists, stage of tourism developmentand volume and stage of the regional economy.The challenge for the future will be to develop deeperlinkages between the tourism industry and local traditionalknowledge and production sectors.
关键词：attitudes towards tourism;tourism development;sustainability;regional economy and regional development
