Local Residents’Perception Of Tourism Impacts

Local residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts play an important role in the sustainabledevelopment of tourism industry. Attitudes can predict behavior, tourism industry can notdevelop smoothly without local residents’ support and cooperation. As the only internationaltropical seaside tourist city in China, Sanya is key to the completion of construction of Hainaninternational tourism island. By studying local residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts, thisthesis provides a theoretical basis to government to issue tourism policies, construct aharmonious society and achieve sustainable development of tourism industry in Sanya.This thesis is composed of five chapters.Chapter one introduces the background,significance, methods and frame of this thesis. Chapter two is an overview of local residents’perceptions of tourism impacts. Chapter three introduces three Important concepts: tourismimpacts, tourism impact perception and attitude, and three related theories: Social ExchangeTheory,Tourism Development Cycle Theory and Stimulation index Theory.Chapter fouris theresults of the local residents’perception of economic, social and environmental impacts ontourism, attitudes towards tourists and the relationship between them, and differences amongdifferent behavior subjects’ perceptions and attitudes. Chapter five is about the conclusionsand suggestions by using Social Exchange Theory to explain the research results.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) perceptions on economic and social benefits arethe predictors of the local residents’ attitudes towards tourists;(2) residents in Sanya havestatistically significantly higher perception of economic and social impacts and theirperception on benefit is higher than on that of the cost, while there is no difference onenvironment impact;(3) differences among different behavior subjects’ perceptions andattitudes can be explained by Social Exchange Theory, that means the pursuit of maximuminterests led to these differences;(4)Residents present cold attitudes to tourists, and this is anresult of their perception of the negative impacts induced by tourist industry.