Objective vs perceived environmental impacts of tourism

Tourism brings significant economic, social, environmental, and psychological impacts to destination communities. In addition to objective indicators, these impacts can also be assessed subjectively through residents’ perceptions. This paper aims to address the gap between objective environmental indicators and residents’ perceived impacts, specifically by comparing air pollution exposure with residents' perceptions of air quality across European countries. The results reveal that objective air quality indicators diverge from residents’ subjective evaluations, highlighting the need for further investigation into the factors influencing these perceptions and strategies for managing the perception-reality gap.