Roles of Tourism Involvement and Place Attachment in Determining Residents’ Attitudes Toward Industrial Heritage Tourism in a Resource-Exhausted City in China

Qing Yuan, HakJun Song, Nan Chen and Wenwen Shang
Additional contact information
Qing Yuan: School of Culture Industry & Tourism Management, Henan University, Kaifeng 475001, China
HakJun Song: Department of Hotel &Convention Management, Paichai University, Daejeon 35345, Korea
Nan Chen: School of Culture Industry & Tourism Management, Henan University, Kaifeng 475001, China
Wenwen Shang: School of Tourism Management, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 19, 1-23

Abstract: An in-depth discussion of place attachment in the relationship between residents’ perceived tourism impacts and their support for tourism is still lacking. The predictor of tourism involvement in this relationship has also been underestimated and little attention has been paid to industrial heritage tourism in relation to residents’ attitudes toward tourism development. To fill this gap, we extend upon the existing studies of residents’ attitudes toward tourism with place attachment (both place identity and place dependence) and tourism involvement based on social exchange theory, attitude theory, and the theory of planned behavior. A self-administered survey was completed by 336 residents of Huangshi, a city undergoing a transition to industrial heritage tourism in China. The findings show that residents’ support for tourism is the result of a complete behavior generation process. This has gradually formed through tourism involvement, cognition, affection, and behavior intention, emphasizing the importance of participation and affective attitude in determining residents’ attitudes toward tourism. To maintain the sustainable development of industrial heritage tourism in the economic transition from an old industrial region to new sectors, local authorities should attach more importance to strengthening residents’ native emotional bonds and concentrate on how to encourage local residents to participate in tourism activities.

Keywords: involvement; affective assessment; tourism impacts; industrial heritage tourism; attitude theory; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/19/5151/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/19/5151/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:19:p:5151-:d:269019

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().