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Residents’ Perceptions of the Economic and Environmental Impacts of Vehicle-Based Lifestyle Travellers: A Case Study of Lagos, Portugal
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Resumo(s)
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the normalization of Vehicle-Based Lifestyle Travelling (VBLT), transforming recreational vehicles into mobile domestic spheres occupying coastal destinations. While accommodation-based digital nomads drive gentrification through short-term rental platforms, VBLTs generate fundamentally divergent impacts by bypassing housing markets entirely, relocating friction from private rental stock to public space through spatial appropriation and fiscal free-riding dynamics. Existing resident perception research privileges Western contexts and exotic nomad destinations while systematically excluding European coastal municipalities experiencing emergent VBLT clustering, leaving the evaluative logic through which communities judge vehicle-based dwelling undocumented. This qualitative and quantitative case study examines residents’ perceptions of the economic and environmental impacts of Vehicle-Based Lifestyle Travellers in Lagos, Portugal through semi-structured interviews with twelve residents, applying the VBLT Spatial-Exchange Model derived from Social Exchange Theory to systematically probe cost-benefit mechanisms including spatial friction, environmental risk, fiscal inequity, housing non-competition, instrumental support, and seasonal economic contribution. Qualitative findings are triangulated through a computational layer combining deductive seeded topic modelling and VADER sentiment analysis applied to the verbatim transcript corpus, with systematic comparison of computational outputs to qualitative coding revealing the limits of purely quantitative methods for small-corpus interview data. Findings reveal that residents grant VBLTs legitimacy in principle while demanding regulatory accountability in practice, producing Support with Restrictions as the modal outcome across the cost-benefit spectrum. Identity Filters, particularly Driver Status and Dog Ownership, determine which costs and benefits residents perceive, operating independently of objective VBLT density. Environmental risk dominates cost salience through dog-owner amplification mechanisms, while spatial friction tends to be more significant through drivers’ lens than non-drivers’. Policy implications emphasize targeted interventions addressing rental fleet behavior, sanitation infrastructure adequacy, and seasonal management rather than blanket prohibition.
Descrição
Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems Management
Palavras-chave
Vehicle-Based Lifestyle Travellers resident perceptions Social Exchange Theory Lagos Portugal qualitative case study