Abstract
It has been generally understood that tourism development for host communities can be a double-edged sword. Tourism development provides advantages and can generate costs. Tourism strategies must reflect an understanding of sustainable tourism development. This requires governments to be fully knowledgeable about the tourism industry and understand its impacts on society. Locals are the main actors in sustainable tourism development. Studies on locals’ perceptions of tourism growth are increasing due to the link between community support and potential development of tourism. Based on social exchange theory and previous findings, this study proposed a series of hypotheses and developed a theoretical model of residents’ support for tourism development in Riyadh city, the capital city of Saudi Arabia. This study is based on a self-administered survey on a sample of 427 Saudi Arabian’s locals living in Riyadh city using structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the data. This study seeks to identify Riyadh residents’ perceptions about the impacts of potential tourism development in Riyadh city, and to understand both the negative and positive impacts of tourism development. In addition, this study seeks to examine the effects of (e.g., community attachment, and resident’s knowledge of tourism development, and community involvement) on locals’ perceived benefit and cost of tourism development. Moreover, this study seeks to identify how the perceived impacts of tourism affect locals’ satisfaction and support for tourism development, and in turn how locals’ satisfaction with tourism affect the intention to support tourism development in Riyadh City.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Tourism and Leisure Industries
KEYWORDS
SUSTAINABILITY, LOCALS' PERCEPTIONS, TOURISM DEVELOPMENT, TOURISM IMPACTS
