Sense of place predictors of perceived effects of a proposed island to mainland bridge on future experience

This paper examines how Estonian and foreign tourists to Saaremaa Island perceive their future experiences in light of a bridge built from mainland Estonia to the island. A logistic regression resulted in six predictors (two demographic and four sense of place scales) of perceived future effects of a proposed bridge on future experience, accounting for 18% of the variance. The six predictors of perceived effects of a potential bridge to the mainland on future holiday experience to Saaremaa Island were nationality, education, socio-cultural context, memory, aesthetics, and wellbeing sense of place scales. Estonians were more positive about the bridge, which supports previous discussions of the essence of home and wellbeing. Wellbeing was the strongest and only positive predictor followed by educational level, memory, socio-cultural context, aesthetics, and nationality, which were all negative. Highlights allude to the predictive power of sense of place on perceived environmental change of development (bridge to island) to future experience among tourists.