Factors Influencing Residents’ Perceptions Toward Tourism Development: Testing the Differences Across Rural and Urban Destinations

Abstract

This article compares the effects of factors influencing residents’ perceptions toward tourism development in urban and rural World Heritage Sites (WHSs). This study has been conducted in the rural Lenggong and urban George Town WHSs in Malaysia. Partial least squares–structural equation modeling, using a number of recently developed advanced analysis methods, has been used to assess the proposed measurement and structural models, and to compare the relationships between the two groups. The results of this study reveal significant differences between the effects of economic gain and community involvement on residents’ perceptions in rural and urban contexts. However, the findings do not support differences between the effects of community attachment and environmental attitudes on residents’ perceptions. This study makes a significant theoretical contribution by comparing rural and urban WHS residents in the developing world. Furthermore, this study has a number of practical implications for the local authorities.

Keywords: residents’ perceptions, rural tourism, urban tourism, World Heritage Site (WHS), multigroup analysis, partial least squares– structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM)