Tourism Dependency and Perceived Local Tourism Governance: Perspective of Residents of Highly-Visited and Less-Visited Tourist Destinations

Abstract

In light of the challenges of the global pandemic caused by COVID-19, the topic of overtourism has been temporarily pushed into the background, but unsustainable tourism practices, which often include ignoring residents, one of the key stakeholders in tourist destinations, remain an important issue for sustainable tourism development in the future. This is a particularly important task for local tourism governances in terms of developing mechanisms for involving residents in planning and decision making. This research focuses on gaining insights into the relationship between the tourism dependency of residents and their perception of local tourism governance in terms of satisfaction with the organization of local public and private tourism stakeholders, as well as with the involvement of residents in tourism planning and decision making. The added value of the research lies in comparing the attitudes of residents in a highly-visited destination and a destination in the early stage of development. Both selected destinations are seaside destinations. with prevailing private accommodation and residential type of tourism. Responses were analyzed using ANOVA and the t-test, and the obtained results indicate that residents with no connection to tourism are the most dissatisfied with the local tourism governance dimensions. Also, residents who live in highly-visited destination had lower mean values of perceived local tourism governance than those living in less-visited destination.

Keywords

• residents
• tourism dependency
• local tourism governance
• overtourism