While many tourism destinations are in the headlines because of overtourism, many rural areas in Europe are suffering from declining residential numbers due to demographic shifts and younger residents moving to urban areas. This research aims to further understand the role of tourism in rural destinations with population decline. With a pilot study from the perspective of an idealized strategy based on a model laddering engagement from being tourists to becoming new residents, three research questions are explored: How can tourism be leveraged to help the community attract residents? What is the role of tourism in the long-term relocation motivations and decision-making processes? What is the meaning of community flourishing from the perspective of residents, tourists and second-home owners? With a qualitative method and grounded theory approach, a pilot case study of a nature-based tourism destination, Järvsö in Sweden, is implemented. The selected case is an example of a destination where a tourism boost strategy was implemented several decades ago with a positive outcome facilitating further development. However, population decline has continued to exacerbate the situation for the municipality and local community and therefore a renewed vision process was initiated resulting in a new strategy to use the tourism attractiveness of the destination to motivate new residents to relocate to the area. This research will help shed light on the role tourism has in helping stem declining residential numbers
Lexhagen et al. (Mon,) studied this question.