Catalyst or Barrier? The Influence of Place Attachment on Perceived Community Resilience in Tourism Destinations

Yongrui Guo,Yuling Zhang,Jie Zhang,Chunhui Zheng

doi:10.3390/su10072347

Abstract

The concept of resilience has recently received a substantial amount of attention in sustainable tourism research. Nevertheless, empirical studies on the factors that may influence the perceived resilience of community residents in tourism destinations remain lacking. A thorough analysis is needed to examine place attachment as a catalyst of or a barrier to community resilience in tourism destinations. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the influence of place attachment on perceived resilience based on data derived from 655 residents in two earthquake-affected tourism communities in Sichuan Province, China. The empirical results indicate that place identity and place dependence have a positive influence on the perceived resilience of community residents in tourism destinations. The equality test for the structural model demonstrates that the influence of place attachment on perceived community resilience is invariant across native residents and lifestyle tourism immigrants. Residents who develop strong place attachment to their communities exhibit greater resilience and adaptive capacity.

Highlights

Tourism has significant socio-economic benefits and has become a major source of income for residents in nature-based communities
Before a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was conducted, the data were screened to check for outliers, missing data, and normality
Because the assumption of the multivariate normality of the data was confirmed, the maximum likelihood (ML) approach was applied in this study

Summary

Introduction

Tourism has significant socio-economic benefits and has become a major source of income for residents in nature-based communities. Many of these communities have shifted from featuring traditional occupations to focusing on tourism, which has become an essential livelihood strategy for community residents [1,2]. Economic recessions, political instability, and terrorist attacks seriously affect the tourism industry at the global and community levels. Such disasters and crises have increasingly become a major threat to tourism communities. There is an urgent need to understand what can promote the resilience of community residents in tourism destinations and the capability of residents in nature-based tourism communities to adapt to and cope with change

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion