Residents' Perceptions Toward Cultural, Social and Economic Benefits and Costs of Tourism Industry: An Empirical Survey

Tourism development plays a crucial role for the local economy and residents' quality of life, especially for Greece, a country suffering from financial crisis. The purpose of the paper is to examine attitudes of residents of a capital city at a prefecture of Central Greece that is Chalkida, the capital of Evia Island, toward tourism development. It was selected as it shares several similarities with most destinations of the neighboring region of Thessaly. Factor analysis of scaled items measuring their attitudes resulted in eight tourism-related factors: beneficial economic, social and cultural influences, welfare impacts, economic cultural and social costs of tourism development and community support. Results indicate residents' expectations from tourism development were not met, as community support toward tourism sector is rather limited. Economic costs of tourism development exert detrimental effects on the welfare of residents, as well as their cultural and social context. In this way, tourism industry lacks community support and as a consequence a rather alienated environment for tourism developments is nurtured. On the contrary, economic benefits are strongly and positively related to welfare, culture benefits, and community support on cultural or historic based tourism. Alike, welfare is associated with social and cultural benefits. Moreover, younger residents are less opting to support tourism development although they share the same perceptions about tourism development with older ones.