Inscription of a destination as a world heritage site and residents’ perceptions

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the differences between residents’ perceptions toward tourism development in two rural tourism destinations, one of which has already been inscribed as a World Heritage Site (WHS). The effects of environmental and cultural attitudes, as well as individual economic gain and community gain on residents’ positive and negative perceptions toward tourism development are compared in these two destinations using Weber’s Theory. The findings of this study showed that positive perceptions, and community gain were highest, and negative perceptions the lowest with respect to tourism development in the WHS destination. This study makes a significant theoretical contribution to the resident perception literature by investigating the effects of WHS inscription on residents’ perceptions toward tourism development.

KEYWORDS:

• Residents’ perceptions
• negative perceptions
• positive perceptions
• tourism impacts
• economic gain
• community gain
• environmental attitudes
• cultural attitudes
• Weber’s Theory of Substantive and Formal Rationality (WTSFR)
• World Heritage Site (WHS)

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to extend their appreciation to the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) for the grant entitled Small Heritage Tourism Destination: An Explanatory Model of Small Heritage Tourism Experience [Grant No. 203.PCOMM.6711579] that makes this paper possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

S. Mostafa Rasoolimanesh http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7138-0280

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to extend their appreciation to the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) for the grant entitled Small Heritage Tourism Destination: An Explanatory Model of Small Heritage Tourism Experience [Grant No. 203.PCOMM.6711579] that makes this paper possible.