Residents’ Negative Perceptions towards Tourism, Loyalty and Happiness: The Case of Fuengirola, Spain

Eva María Sánchez-Teba, María Dolores Benítez-Márquez and Teresa Romero-Navas
Additional contact information
Eva María Sánchez-Teba: Department of Economics and Business Administration, Campus de El Ejido 6, University of Malaga, 29071 Malaga, Spain
María Dolores Benítez-Márquez: Department of Applied Economics (Statistics and Econometrics), Facultad de Comercio y Gestión, University of Malaga, Andalucía-Tech, Av. Francisco Trujillo Villanueva, 1, 29071 Málaga, Spain
Teresa Romero-Navas: Department of Economics and Business Administration, Campus de El Ejido 6, University of Malaga, 29071 Malaga, Spain

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

Abstract: Current studies suggest focusing on the study of residents’ negative perceptions towards tourism. This study estimates a confirmatory model of structural equations based on variance. The negative perceptions of residents living in Fuengirola (Spain), divided into three dimensions (negative economic impact, negative social impact, and negative environmental impact), according to social exchange theory, and, also the residents’ loyalty to their city are considered to be predictors of residents’ happiness. We have proposed a construct of residents’ loyalty to their tourism destination residence as a novelty, being composed of two indicators. The model has been computed based on partial least squares-structural equation modeling. The following hypotheses have been tested: (a) negative perceptions have positive effects on each other; (b) negative perceptions have a negative effect on happiness; and, (c) residents’ loyalty has a positive effect on happiness. The hypotheses were not rejected. Moreover, the loyalty of the residents has the highest direct positive impact, while the negative impacts have weak negative effects, direct and indirect, on the happiness of the residents. The result of the positive relationship between place loyalty and happiness referred by those persons who perceive their living place (neighborhood) as prestigious is consistent with our findings, which is, an increase of loyalty was found to be associated with an increase in happiness.

Keywords: Tourism; residents’ perceptions; residents’ loyalty; place loyalty; happiness; Fuengirola; partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM); SmartPLS; social exchange theory (SET) (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 (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/23/6841/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/23/6841/ (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:23:p:6841-:d:293079

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 ().