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Rural Residents' Perceptions Toward Tourism Development: a Study from Iran
Author(s) -
Abdollahzadeh Gholamhosssein,
Sharifzadeh Abolqasem
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
international journal of tourism research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.155
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1522-1970
pISSN - 1099-2340
DOI - 10.1002/jtr.1906
Subject(s) - tourism , perception , rural tourism , social exchange theory , value (mathematics) , empirical research , homogeneous , community development , economic growth , socioeconomics , identification (biology) , psychology , tourism geography , marketing , sociology , geography , business , social psychology , economics , archaeology , neuroscience , philosophy , computer science , biology , epistemology , machine learning , thermodynamics , physics , botany
This paper focuses on the identification and explanation of rural residents' perceptions toward the impacts of tourism development and their grouping with respect to these attitudes. Data from 262 households are used in the empirical analysis. Because of emerging stages of tourism development in the study area, most residents expressed a quite strong support for tourism development, although some social and environmental concern was expressed. The results revealed that respondents most value economic objectives, but the community was not homogeneous in its views. Education, gender, age, income, employment and a high degree of community attachment were found to be the major factors affecting the attitudes of residents. Findings of this study indicate that local people value the tourism in ways consistent with the social exchange theory. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.