Does the education level of residents influence the support for sustainable tourism?

ABSTRACT

This study sets out to analyze residents’ support for sustainable tourism through perceived benefits and costs, community attachment and community participation, measuring the influence of the level of education of residents in a tourist destination where three tourism-related typologies coexist. We tested our conceptual model using survey data from 323 residents of the city of Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. The results based on PLS-SEM show that the perceived benefits, the perceived costs, community attachment and community participation are antecedents to the support for sustainable tourism development, although no significant differences were found between the residents’ level of education (university or basic). This study opens an interesting debate, as previous research has found differences between residents and their support for tourism according to their level of education.

KEYWORDS:

• Support for sustainable tourism
• level of education
• residents
• tourism
• local community

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).