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Understanding local residents’ attitudes toward tourism development is vitalfor the success and sustainability of any type of tourism development. A largenumber of studies have examined resident attitudes and the factors that arelikely to influence those attitudes. Most of those studies suggest that locals tendto have positive attitudes because they see tourism as an economic developmenttool (Gursoy, Jurowski and Uysal 2002). However, residents’ perceptions of im-pacts and their level of support tend to change as a destination moves fromone stage of destination lifecycle to the next. As suggested by Butler’s (1980) cy-cle of evolution, diminished resident support for tourism development becomesevident as destinations move to latter stages of development. At this stage, tradi-tional economic assessment tools may not be enough to assess locals attitudes be-cause positive and negative socio-cultural influences are also needed to beconsidered in addition to economic and environmental impacts. While residentsmay oppose one type of development, they may be more willing to support an-other type. Thus a continuing assessment of locals’ attitudes for different typesof development may be necessary to assure sustainability of industry and to man-age more critical aspects that appear as a tourism destination continues to devel-op. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine local residents’ attitudesand the antecedents of those attitudes towards two different types of tourismdevelopment: mass tourism and alternative tourism. Mass tourism developmentin this study is defined as attractions and facilities designed to accommodatelarge numbers of tourist. Alternative tourism development is defined as attrac-tions and facilities designed for eco-tourism, cultural heritage tourism and out-door recreational tourism activities.The model tested in this study is adopted from Gursoy and Rutherford (2004). Itproposes that the perceptions of economic benefits, social benefits, social costs, so-cio-economic costs, cultural benefits and the state of the local economy are theantecedents of local residents support for both type of tourism development. Italso suggests that those perceptions are influenced by the concern residents havefor their community, their emotional attachment to their community, the degreeto which they are environmentally sensitive, and the extent to which they use thesame resource base that tourists use. In addition, the model suggests that the stateof the local economy influences the perceptions of the benefits and costs of tour-ism development. Please see Gursoy and Rutherford for detailed discussion aboutthe model.Research notes and reports / Annals of Tourism Research 36 (2009) 715–734 |
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