Won’t You Be My Neighbor? : Studying the Psychosocial Impact of Seasonality on Nantucket

Abstract

Seasonality plays an important role in the lives of year-round residents who live in resort communities. During the peak season, the island of Nantucket’s population swells with day-trippers, second homeowners, and vacationers. While these individuals create the economic base, they can also create complex social dynamics. For three months out of the year, year-round residents are confronted with increased displays of affluence, leisure, and status symbols—all of which can serve as salient targets for seasonal social exclusion and upward social comparison. The present study aimed to investigate if seasonality impacted social exclusion and self-esteem. Specifically, do year-round residents living in seasonal resort communities perceive greater social exclusion and develop lower self-esteem during the peak season, and does engaging in upward social comparison with dissimilar others mediate this relationship? This study was a cross-sectional, within-subjects design that incorporated a between-season component to investigate if there were seasonal differences between social exclusion, upward social comparison, and self-esteem. Peak and off-season data was used to determine if a within-season relationship existed between these three primary outcome variables. The results found that year-round Nantucketers perceive greater social exclusion, engage more frequently in upward social comparison, and have lower self-esteem during the peak season relative to the off-season.