Scantiness may suggest strip, say, in resort (8)
I believe the answer is:
sparsity
'scantiness' is the definition.
(sparsity is a kind of scantiness)
'strip say in resort' is the wordplay.
'in resort' indicates an anagram.
'strip'+'say'='stripsay'
'stripsay' with letters rearranged gives 'SPARSITY'.
'may suggest' is the link.
(Other definitions for sparsity that I've seen before include "Shortness of supply" , "Thinly scattered state" , "Thinness of occurrence" , "Scantiness" , "Thinly-scattered state" .)