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Concepts of health and wellbeing have long been conceived as relevant to leisure, recreation and rejuvenation. These are now conceived as being necessary and useful as potential measures of success in community development and in that subset of leisure and recreation pursuits that is designated as tourism at a destination. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

A post-modern approach to development of community and markers of sustainable development more-or-less correspond to sustainable development goals (there are 17) that often overlay the concepts of good health and wellbeing that concern all stakeholders.

This paper encompasses best practice experiences from two case studies conducted in a tourism “hot spot” in the environs of the first National Park established in Derbyshire in the UK. There is some urgency about this topic as resources for community development are increasingly under pressure from local, central government and the expectation is now that local communities take full responsibility for that development. An inter-disciplinary approach using concepts of health and wellbeing is recommended.

Wellbeing may demand a greater allocation of scarce resources in an era of self-determination, bottom-up and locally sourced community aspiring to become, or remain, a destination of choice. Two case studies’ outcomes in this development are presented with a special focus on creation of a repository for the know-how and know what of the learning acquired.

Based on the assumption of the service-dominant logic (S-D logic) that every exchange is service-for-service and on the relevance of the beneficiary’s role in the co-creation of value, this paper aims to investigate the effects of engagement in the context of social marketing, where the value proposition is an invitation to practice mindfulness.

A field experiment was carried out with 72 volunteers, using a pre-test/post-test control group design. The treatment applied was a set of strategies to increase the engagement of the participants to attain a better result in five dependent variables associated mainly with the benefits of mindfulness practice. Measurements were made from a profile analysis, and submitted to Mann-Whitney and t-tests.

A large effect of group and time factors were observed in the multivariate test, as well as differences in the co-creation of value between groups.

This study can contribute to stimulate experimental transdisciplinary research in humans, using concepts from S-D logic and social marketing to promote positive behavioral change. This approach is probably more efficient at explaining and improving human behavior, given its complex nature.