UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., May 26 -- Pennsylvania State University issued the following news release:

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Tourism affects local populations differently in counties across the U.S., but measuring these effects may now be easier thanks to a new tool developed as part of a study by researchers at Penn State.

For the study, published in the journal Tourism Economics, the researchers developed a sustainability index to assess how tourism affects counties according to a number of factors that measure the areas' economic, social and environmental well-being. They found that counties relying heavily on tourism varied widely in their ability to keep it from overwhelming local resources, with no destination performing well on every di...