Research On Relationship Between Residents’ Sense Of Place And Perceptions & Attitude Toward Tourism Impacts In Ethnic Areas

Tourism, as a popular form of entertainment, is attracting more and more tourists in today’s world. Tourism has got much attention from the government, academia and industry insiders. However, studies on residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts and attitude in ethnic areas are relatively few. Since residents in tourism destination are an important factor in the sustainable development of tourism industry, study on residents’ perceptions and attitude toward tourism impacts plays an important role in scientific tourism planning and reasonable development of tourism. Sense of place reflects the special emotional connection between people and places, providing a new perspective for understanding deeply the residents’ perceptions on tourism impacts.Tourism development has been focused by the academia, and the tourism development of ethnic areas plays a key role in this field. Because the economic development of ethnic areas not only relates to economic, but also relates to the ethnic, cultural and many other aspects. Generally, ethnic areas are often in remote locations, where natural and cultural tourism resources are abundant and unique, and thus tourism has become an important industry in many ethnic areas. However, with rapid development of tourism in ethnic areas, it also faces multiple challenges, which makes rinding new ways and new strategy to explore sustainable development of tourism apriority. Yanbian is the only Korean Nationality Autonomous Region in China, where local residents will inevitably suffer all kinds of the impacts of tourism with the rapid development of tourism industry, and at the same time residents’ perceptions and attitude toward tourism impacts also matter. With the sense of place as the theoretical starting point, this paper constructs a theory model of "sense of place-perceptions toward tourism impacts-attitude" by taking Yanbian as the study area. Based on a sampling survey of residents’ perceptions and attitude toward tourism impacts, this paper uses multiple methods including tourism geography, psychology and other disciplines to analyze the relationship between the sense of place and residents’ perceptions and attitude toward tourism impacts in tourism destination. Focusing on tourism impacts, this paper analyzes residents’ perceptions and attitude toward tourism impacts from perspective of sense of place. The paper, by using the method of questionnaire survey, obtains first-hand data about residents’ sense of place and perceptions & attitude toward tourism impacts. It uses a variety of analytical methods including descriptive analysis, factor analysis and regression analysis to analyze residents’ sense of place, perceptions and attitude toward tourism impacts form aspects of economics, social culture and environment. The findings show that:residents’ sense of place has a significant positive influence on perceived benefit of tourism; residents’ sense of place has a significant negative influence on perceived cost of tourism; residents’ perceived benefit of tourism has a significant positive influence on attitude; residents’ perceived cost of tourism has a significant negative influence on attitude; residents’ sense of place has a significant positive influence on attitude. According to the above results, some suggestions are put forward for the tourism development in ethnic areas, which includes enhancing residents’sense of place, strengthening perceived benefits of tourism, weakening perceived cost of tourism and improving their attitude toward tourism, in order to provide reference for the sustainable development of tourism in ethnic areas.