Tourist attractiveness: measuring residents’ perception of tourists

Abstract

To date, tourism research has primarily explored resident perception and attitude in terms of tourism impact and development. Comparatively, resident perception of tourists themselves has attracted less attention from tourism researchers despite the fact host communities see the benefits of tourism through positive relationships with tourists. Moreover, studies on the resident-tourist relationship have largely been interested in the perspective of tourists, considering tourists as customers who bring economic benefits to a destination, while seeing residents as beneficiaries of the tourists’ expenditures during their trip. The skewed approach has amplified the incomplete understanding of the resident-tourist relationship, disregarding the importance of reciprocity and the merchandized purpose of the exchanges in this relationship. As a starting point to study the residents' perspectives toward the resident-tourist relationship, this study explored and operated the concept of tourist attractiveness through a mixed-methods approach using a case study of Jeju Island, South Korea. As a result, this study found that tourist attractiveness can be measured using five sub-dimensions: tourist compatibility, tourist financial capacity, tourist responsibility, positive tourist influence, and negative tourist influence.

Keywords:

• Resident-tourist relationship
• resident perception of tourist
• tourism impact
• tourist attractiveness
• scale development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gyunghoon Kim

Dr. Gyunghoon Kim is an instructor in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management at Clemson University. His research interest includes sustainable tourism development, tourism policy, and destination marketing. His current research examines the sociocultural effects of tourism on host community.

Lauren N. Duffy

Dr. Lauren N. Duffy is an associate professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management at Clemson University. Her research interests are in tourism development, particularly in Latin American contexts, with a focus on the power dynamics and distribution of impacts/resources throughout the tourism planning process, gender and tourism, and issues of social justice in tourism.

DeWayne Moore

Dr. DeWayne Moore is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Clemson University. His interests and teaching focus on quantitative methods and scale development. He has served as a quantitative consultant for the CDC and on grants from NSF and NIH. He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals.