Socio-Economic and Ecological Impact Assessment: A Study of Tourism in Sikkim

This study focuses on three principal effects of tourism, namely, Economic, Social and Environmental. This study finds that although there are some negative aspects, most economic consequences of tourism is beneficial. These benefits include generation of income, employment, foreign exchange, government revenue, infrastructure building and so on. The economic impacts of tourism are usually considered to be beneficial for countries and localities. The real controversies lie in tourism's impact on environmental and socio-cultural aspects. This paper tries to analyze that if managed properly, tourism's overall positive effects are able to offset the few negatives in all three respects. The study has taken the state of Sikkim as the sample.