Historic District Residents' Perception Of The Beginning Of The Tourism Planning And Attitudes

Modern tourism planning has put more emphasis on community participation. Research on residents'perceptions and attitudes in destination has been one of the key links of community participation. While many studies have examined this proposition towards the later stages of development, few have examined the pre-tourism phase. This study illustrated residents'perceptions of the impact of tourism and their attitudes towards tourism at the initial stage of tourism planning by a case study of zhongshan load, Hangzhou.First, a proposed measurement scale was used to assess local resident's perceptions of tourism impacts, which was adopted from Liu and Akis's study. After identifying the resident's perceptions of tourism impacts, a structural model was constructed to further test the influence of those perceptions on their support/opposition for tourism development. Six dimensions of perceived tourism impacts were examined as exogenous variables and the support for tourism development was examined as the endogenous variable. An analysis of the estimated standardized path coefficients in the proposed structural model reveals the significance, strength and direction of each hypothesized relationship. Three of the six hypothesized paths in the proposed theoretical model are statistically significant in the direction predicted at the 0.01 probability level. Three of the proposed hypotheses are rejected. The results from the structural modeling revealed that perceived economic benefits and perceived social benefits have significant positive direct impact on local residents' support for tourism development, and perceived social costs have significant negative direct impact on local residents' support for tourism development. The article also examined the residents'opinion towards tourism planning of zhongshan load.