Resident Support for Tourism Development: Application of a Simplified Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale on Developing Destinations in Flanders

Autor: Bart Neuts, Jan Van der Borg, Senne Kimps
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
PLS-SEM
resident attitudes
Economic growth
PERCEPTIONS
Leverage (finance)
IMPACT
media_common.quotation_subject
Environmental Studies
Geography
Planning and Development
TJ807-830
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
Management
Monitoring
Policy and Law
Destinations
TD194-195
Settore SECS-P/06 - Economia Applicata
Renewable energy sources
Strategic goal
11. Sustainability
0502 economics and business
Natural heritage
GE1-350
ATTITUDES
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
DISTURBANCE
Empowerment
media_common
Science & Technology
ISSUES
Environmental effects of industries and plants
HERITAGE
Renewable Energy
Sustainability and the Environment
05 social sciences
1. No poverty
Resident Empowerment through Tourism
social exchange theory
Environmental sciences
social impact resident perception tourism scheldeland
Social exchange theory
Scale (social sciences)
Science & Technology - Other Topics
OVERTOURISM
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
050211 marketing
Business
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Environmental Sciences
050212 sport
leisure & tourism
Tourism
Zdroj: Sustainability
Volume 13
Issue 12
Sustainability, Vol 13, Iss 6934, p 6934 (2021)
Popis: While the potential macro-economic benefits of tourism development have been well-established, the negative social effects of uninhibited growth have received increased attention in the last decade, emphasizing the central role of communities in the search for a sustainable balance in tourism. This paper focuses on the relatively underdeveloped Scheldeland region in Flanders (Belgium), where a strategic goal is to leverage cultural and natural heritage to boost development. Via a resident questionnaire based on a simplified version of the Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale (RETS), we identified support for tourism development and deconstructed the drivers of this support. The objective was to empirically validate the research instrument and underlying theory in a situation of relative ‘undertourism’ and prospective future growth. The questionnaire collected 2058 responses, and the partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) results indicated that support for tourism, which was generally high across the seven municipalities, was mainly affected by social, psychological, and political empowerment, with personal economic benefits not playing a significant role. These results show that social exchange theory (SET) as a theoretical basis for potential tourism support has limited validity in currently underdeveloped destinations. Secondly, comparatively speaking, the municipalities with the lowest tourism development were least supportive of tourism growth, with an increase in tourism intensity seemingly leading to increasing support due to a higher awareness of accrued benefits through tourism.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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