![Sample our Environment & Sustainability journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5935/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Environment-Sustainability.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
A clear understanding of residents’ attitudes towards tourism development and its determinants is a crucial pillar for designing tourism development strategies to promote sustainable development. The literature on the influence of host–tourist interactions and place attachment on residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in developing countries is still scarce. To extend knowledge in this field, this study aims at developing and testing a structural model to examine direct and indirect causal effects of place attachment, host–tourist interaction, and perceived positive and negative tourism impacts on the residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in an island tourism destination – Boa Vista Island in Cape Verde. Results suggest that the residents’ attitudes are positively affected by place attachment, host–tourist interaction, and perceived positive impacts; and negatively affected by perceived negative impacts. Host–tourist interaction emerges as the strongest (direct and indirect) determinant of the residents’ attitudes towards tourism development. Moreover, although both positive and negative perceptions of tourism impacts have significant impacts on the residents’ attitudes, the influence of the former is stronger than that of the latter. The paper ends with relevant theoretical and practical implications to promote positive residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in Boa Vista.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Celeste Eusébio
Celeste Eusébio is an assistant professor of tourism and a researcher at the GOVCOPP Research Unit at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. She received a degree in tourism management and planning from the University of Aveiro in 1995, the master's degree in economics from the University of Coimbra in 1998, and the doctoral degree in tourism, also from the University of Aveiro in 2006. Her research interests include tourism economics, tourism impacts, tourism forecasts and consumer behaviour in tourism. She is currently the coordinator of the Degree in Tourism at the University of Aveiro.
Armando Luís Vieira
Armando Luis Vieira teaches at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, where he also serves as a director and vice-director of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the area of tourism management and planning. His research interests include the areas of services marketing, tourism and hospitality management, and psychology. He is the author of a range of books and articles on these and related subjects. Recent publications have appeared in International Journal of Tourism Research, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, and Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Sara Lima
Sara Lima received the master's degree in local economy from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Her research interests include tourism and local development, with a particular focus on the role of residents in the process of tourism development in developing countries.
