Laurie Murphy grew up in London Ontario Canada and completed a Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Waterloo in Recreation and Leisure Studies. She then spent two years at North Carolina State University completing and Master’s Degree in Recreation and Leisure and as a research assistant on a major project for the North Carolina State Division of Travel and Tourism where more than 12,000 visitors to the state were surveyed.

While backpacking in Australia Laurie was offered a lecturing position at JCU which she took up in 1991 and she completed her PhD at JCU on Backpackers and their travel decisions in 1997.

Teaching

• BU3101: Professional Internship (Level 3; CNS & TSV)
• BU3102: Multidisciplinary Project (Level 3; TSV)
• BU3103: Independent Project (Level 3; CNS & TSV)
• BX2094: Conference and Events Management (Level 2; TSV)
• BX3194: Destination Management and Planning (Level 3; TSV)
• CP3102: Multidisciplinary Project (Level 3; TSV)

Interests

Professional

• Laurie serves on the Tourism and Event Strategic Advisory Committee at Townsville Enterprise.

Research

• Understanding and improving tourism’s contribution to regional Australia: Her early work on backpackers focused on understanding their travel decision making processes.
• Work in the field of destination branding has focused on its application to regional destinations and whether traditional brand personality concepts translate from consumer goods to tourism destinations.
• Tourism and its contribution to regional communities is at the core of another ongoing research program focusing on Tourist Shopping Villages. This research examines tourist shopping villages in order to understand how their performance can be enhanced for multiple stakeholders in the community and considers the tourist experiences. The shopping villages research highlighted the important linkages between tourism and other regional industries. This has evolved into the more recent research examining the links between tourism and community well-being in more detail in order to identify the ways in which tourism can best make a positive contribution to tropical communities.
• These topics have now expanded to the Quality of Life Index with the aim of developing measures of community well-being, and then presenting profiles for tropical regions in NQ. in the public arena .
• Laurie is a key member of a team of researchers investigating fly-in, fly-out workers, with a particular interest on the impacts on families and local communities, including tourism businesses.

Teaching

• Laurie is the Work Integrated Learning Co-ordinator for the School of Business and is responsible for establishing industry partnerships to facilitate professional internship and industry project opportunities for students.

Experience

• 1991 to present - Associate Professor, James Cook University (Townsville)

Research Disciplines

• Tourism (1506)
• Applied Economics (1402)

Socio-Economic Objectives

• Tourism (9003)
• Microeconomics (9102)
• Environmentally Sustainable Commercial Services and Tourism (9098)

These are the most recent publications associated with this author. To see a detailed profile of all publications stored at JCU, visit ResearchOnline@JCU. Hover over Altmetrics badges to see social impact.

Journal Articles

• Nicholas C, Murphy L and Blackman A (2019) Exploring the dimensions of social capital that are effective mediators of long distance commuting impacts on wellbeing. Resources Policy, 60. pp. 185-197
• Nicholas C, Welters R and Murphy L (2018) Does social capital help communities to cope with long-distance commuting? Regional Studies, 52 (12). pp. 1646-1657
• Jin H, Moscardo G and Murphy L (2017) Making sense of tourist shopping research: a critical review. Tourism Management, 62. pp. 120-134
• Moscardo G, Konovalov E, Murphy L, Mcgehee N and Schurmann A (2017) Linking tourism to social capital in destination communities. Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, 6 (4). pp. 286-295
• Moscardo G and Murphy L (2016) Using destination community wellbeing to assess tourist markets: a case study of Magnetic Island, Australia. Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, 5 (1). pp. 55-64
• Blackman A, Welters R, Murphy L, Eagle L, Pearce M, Pryce J, Lynch P and Low D (2014) Worker's perceptions of FIFO work in North Queensland, Australia. Australian Bulletin of Labour, 40 (2). pp. 180-200
• Moscardo G and Murphy L (2014) There is no such thing as sustainable tourism: re-conceptualizing tourism as a tool for sustainability. Sustainability, 6 (5). pp. 2538-2561

Book Chapters

• Konovalov E, Murphy L and Moscardo G (2019) An exploration of links between levels of tourism development and impacts on the social facet of residents' quality of life. In: Best practices in hospitality and tourism marketing and management: a quality of life perspective. Applying quality of life research: best practices. Springer International Publishing, Cham, CHE, pp. 77-107
• Moscardo G and Murphy L (2015) Educating destination communities for sustainability in tourism. In: Education for Sustainability in Tourism: a handbook of processes, resources and strategies. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, New York, NY, USA, pp. 135-154

Conference Papers

• Blackman A, Moscardo G, Schurmann A and Murphy L (2014) Exploring youth perspectives on quality of life and tourism: policy and planning implications. Conference Proceedings of BEST EN Think Tank XIV: politics, policy and governance in sustainable tourism. 23-26 June 2014, Lyubljana, Slovenia
• Moscardo G, Blackman A and Murphy L (2014) Tourism development as Greek tragedy: implications for tourism development policy and education. Conference Proceedings of BEST EN Think Tank XIV: politics, policy and governance in sustainable tourism. 23-26 June 2014, Lyubljana, Slovenia
• Murphy L, Moscardo G and Blackman A (2014) Tropical communities as resources for tourism or tourism as a resource for tropical communities: changing the perspective by applying a community well-being framework in the Mekong Delta. Conference Proceedings of BEST EN Think Tank XIV: politics, policy and governance in sustainable tourism. 23-26 June 2014, Lyubljana, Slovenia

More

ResearchOnline@JCU stores 60+ research outputs authored by A/Prof Laurie Murphy from 2001 onwards.

Current and recent Research Funding to JCU is shown by funding source and project.

Advisory Accreditation: I can be on your Advisory Panel as a Primary or Secondary Advisor.

These Higher Degree Research projects are either current or by students who have completed their studies within the past 5 years at JCU. Linked titles show theses available within ResearchOnline@JCU.

Current

• Re-assessing the effectiveness of community-based tourism in under developed economies: A semi-traditional perspective (PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Investigating into spatio-temporal based sentiment sequence discovery within documents using trajectory mining technique (PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Examining Criminal Responsibility through 'Command Responsibility', 'Superior Orders' and the 'Doctrine of Military Necessity' as applied at the Allied Military War Crimes Trials of the Pacific War 1945-1951 (PhD , Advisor Mentor)
• The role of governance in building political, social and human capitals for sustainable tourism development in the Mekong River Delta (PhD , Primary Advisor/AM/Adv)

Completed

• Tourism and community well-being: social impacts of tourism in Australian tropical communities (2017, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Integrated resorts: Singapore's answer to destination competitiveness? (2016, PhD , Primary Advisor)
• Long distance commuting into Australian regions: its determinants and impacts on wellbeing in the region and social capital's capacity to mediate those impacts (2018, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Popular culture as a powerful destination marketing tool: an Australian study (2019, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Word of mouth communication in destination marketing: a comparative study of the caravan and backpacker markets in Cairns (2015, PhD , Associate Advisor)
• Recall and post-trip evaluation of tourist destinations; The effects of travel order (2020, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Understanding Chinese tourist shopping in Australia: a social practice (2019, PhD , Secondary Advisor)