SOCIO-CULTURAL, ENVIROMENTAL AND ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF TOURISM: AN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON THE 2013 MERSIN MEDITERRANEAN GAMES

Abstract

In this research which was applied to residents of Mersin centrum, it has been tried to determine the support of the people for the tourism and socio-cultural, enviromental and economic effects of the 2013 Mersin Mediterranean Games. The questionnaire was arranged according to 5 Likert scale formed with the help of the scale which had been developed by Yoon, Gürsoy and Chen (2011), and analyzed via SPSS 11.5 statistic package programme. In the study which aims to determine how the people who live in the city of Mersin perceive the 2013 Mediterranean Games and to understand the contribution of the games to the area, correlation, t-test and regression analyses were conducted. The results of correlation analysis show that there are statistically significant relationships between age, education level, monthly income and the model groups. The t-test has been conducted to understand if there is a difference for the effects of tourism in terms of socio-cultural, environmental and economic effects according to gender, marital status and place of birth. As a result of the test some differences were determined and some meaningful relationships were found.