Satisfaction of Tourism Communities in World Heritage Sites Based on Residents’ Perceptions—Study Area of Mount Sanqingshan National Park, PRC

Sifeng Nian, Fajian Liu (), Min Chen and Guoqing Cheng
Additional contact information
Sifeng Nian: School of Business, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China
Fajian Liu: School of Business, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China
Min Chen: School of Business, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China
Guoqing Cheng: School of Business, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-23

Abstract: Tourist communities have enjoyed the benefits of tourist development in various regions and have paid the associated costs, resulting in different attitudes towards tourism development in World Heritage Sites. On this basis, this study takes the Mount Sanqingshan National Park, a World Natural Heritage site, collects 330 examples of perceptions of residents of tourism communities, relies on social exchange theory and community participation theory, uses structural equation modeling as a technical methodology, and constructs a conceptual model, including perceived benefits and costs, community satisfaction, and place attachment as mediating variables from the view of tourism’s social, economic, environmental, and heritage protection impacts. The study shows that: first, the perceptions of benefits have a significant positive influence on place attachment and community satisfaction; second, the perceived cost has a significant negative influence on place attachment, and a negative influence on community satisfaction does not hold true; third, place attachment has a full mediating effect on tourist cost perception and satisfaction, a partial mediating effect on tourist benefit perception and satisfaction, and a significant positive effect on community satisfaction. Finally, we propose the ‘SHE-ABC’ framework of WHS tourist community satisfaction based on the perspectives of heritage tourism impact perception and place attachment. The results of the study have theoretical value and practical guidance to sustainable development, tourist industry, and community management of World Heritage Sites.

Keywords: community participation; perceived cost–benefit; place attachment; community satisfaction; World Heritage Site (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/1/533/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/1/533/ (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:15:y:2022:i:1:p:533-:d:1017959

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 ().