Open AccessAttitudes of Residents Towards Tourism: An Insight into West Bengal’s Coastal Tourism Sites, India
Author(s) -
Jayanta Saha,
AUTHOR_ID,
Paul Sabatier,
AUTHOR_ID
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of scientific enquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2583-2352
DOI - 10.54280/21/14
Subject(s) - tourism , destinations , geography , cronbach's alpha , business , marketing , socioeconomics , economic growth , west bengal , sociology , economics , archaeology , service (business)
The main purpose of this paper is to assess the residents’ attitude toward the impacts of tourism development on physical, economic and social environment at Mandarmani and Tajpur tourism destinations of Purba Medinipur district, West Bengal, India. This study also ties to find out the residents’ support for tourism development. The study is completely based on primary survey and data have been collected from total 648 respondents of the total 24 surrounding villages (358 from Mandarmani and 290 from Tajpur) including the tourism destination villages during October 2018 to January, 2019. Perceptions of respondents were taken on different environmental, economic, social and cultural impact variables to measure their attitudes. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique and Cronbach’s Alpha index were applied to validate the data reliability. Residents of both destinations were strongly agreed that eco system and bio-diversity of both destinations were affected due to tourism development. The residents of both tourism destinations not primarily depend on tourism and related activities. According to their perceptions, the benefits of the tourism development have concentrated to the groups and companies who established the hotels and resorts, and only few groups of local people gain the economic benefits of tourism. The tourism has introduced a number of economic opportunities to the residents such as employment opportunities in both direct and indirect ways, growth of markets, renting houses etc. Residents expressed positive view point that these destinations receive a cultural identity and provide opportunities for cultural exchange. The residents of these destinations have been categorised as ‘In-betweeners’ and their responses remain in ‘tolerance level’. Following the Doxey’s Irridex model, these destinations were in the stage of apathy when there is a steadily increasing visits and some residents start to take commercial advantages of the newly tourism development.