Tourism Analysis, Vol. 9 pp. 285–298 1083-5423/05 $20.00 + .00 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2005 Cognizant Comm. Corp. www.cognizantcommunication.com 285 Address correspondence to Duarte B. Morais, Assistant Professor of Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management, The Pennsylvania State University, 228 Mateer Building, University Park, PA 16802-1307. Tel: (814) 865-5614; Fax: (814) 863-4257; E- mail: dmorais@psu.edu CENTER/PERIPHERY IMBALANCE IN TOURISM DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF TAIWAN DUARTE B. MORAIS, *CHUNG-HSIEN LIN,† and JING-SHOUNG HOU‡ *Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management, The Pennsylvania State University, 228 Mateer Building, University Park, PA 16802-1307 †Department of Land Management, The Feng-Chia University, Taichung 403, Taiwan ‡Landscape Architecture, Tung-Hai University, Taichung 403, Taiwan Many authors have examined the spatial distribution of tourism sites in an attempt to inform tourism planning and policy. Most of their work, however, has focused on physical planning issues and has overlooked the role of those tourism sites in transforming land into desirable or undesirable places to live for the host communities. This study attempts to address this concern from an environmental justice perspective by examining whether tourism development is evenly distributed across geographic regions and fairly distributed across sociodemographic groups in Taiwan. The results indicated that there is spatial inequality in the distribution of tourist sites. As predicted in literature examining tourism flows, tourist numbers were concentrated in peripheral areas with lower household incomes— the pleasure periphery. For example, Chomalai farm in Tainan County is a very popular destination but is located in one of the poorest regions in Taiwan. In addition, size of the local population and the average amount of money local people received from tourism appeared to be unrelated to numbers of tourists visiting the area. Due to the geographic clustering of most of the variables examined, it is recommended that subsequent studies consider using spatial regression instead of the traditional OLS regression, which is more frequently found in the literature. In conclusion, the findings support the current emphasis in sustainable tourism, suggesting that planners should consider whether tourism results in local undesirable or desirable land use because the tourism industry tends to disproportionably affect less-developed peripheral regions. Key words: Environmental justice; Tourism planning; Sustainable tourism; Spatial analysis cades. In early years, the focus was on gaining an understanding of the spatial distribution of various The spatial distribution of tourism development has been the focus of much research in the past de-