Abstract:
Residents’ attitude/support towards tourism development has engrossed many scholars'
attention in tourism studies. To give the importance of understanding the residents’
attitude towards tourism development and understand the limitations in understanding
the perception of residents based on socio-cultural factors, this study endeavored to
model the residents’ s support for tourism development based on the study of socio cultural impacts. To identify the relationship with dependent and independent variables,
several hypotheses were developed and were tested to achieve the major objectives of
this study such as identifying the most significant determinants of the perceived impacts
of tourism development, assessing how the determining factors affect the perceived
impacts of tourism development and determining how the perceived impacts affect the
attitude towards tourism development. The proposed socio-cultural research framework
has predicted the impact of knowledge about tourism, intrinsic motivation factors,
community attachment, and community concern on residents’ support for tourism
development in Jaffna district through the mediating variables of perceived socio cultural benefits and perceived socio-cultural costs. The perceptions of 600 residents
were collected through a stratified random sampling technique. The model and
hypothesis paths were tested using Structural Equation Modeling with the aid of AMOS
and SPSS software packages. Findings disclose that residents’ support for tourism
development in Jaffna district is a role of perceived socio-cultural benefits and costs perceived by residents and four independent variables of knowledge about tourism,
intrinsic motivation factors, community attachment, and community concern. The
results reveal that the perception regarding tourism impacts might create both positive
and negative attitudes regarding tourism development in Jaffna district, which might
assist in gaining support from the residents regarding tourism development.
