Linking Culture and the Environment

244 The Attitudes of Community Residents Towards Tourism
Table 14.2. Continued
Tourism attitude items
Factor
loading
Scale
mean
Cronbach
alpha
Variance
explained
Eigenvalue
Increasing the number of tourists to 0.66
a community improves the local
economy
Tourists are valuable 0.57
Tourism provides incentives for
0.49
restoration of historic buildings
Lifestyle costs
Tourism results in an increase in
0.64
the cost of living
Tourism usually benefits a small
0.63
group of residents
Tourism causes change in traditional 0.51
culture
Native people are being exploited by 0.48
tourism
Tourists negatively affect a
0.47
community’s way of life
Deleted items
Tourism development increases
property values
The environmental impacts resulting
from tourism are relatively minor
It is important that community
residents be involved in decisions
about tourism
My community’s residents are
courteous and friendly to tourists
The overall benefits of tourism
outweigh the negative impacts
1995), increased quality of life or standard of living (Long et al., 1990;
Lankford and Howard, 1994) and improved roads and public services
(Lankford and Howard, 1994).
Most study findings thus far have not found residents to be greatly concerned
about the negative aspects of tourism on a general level. Several studies
reveal concerns with one or more specific items with respect to negative
impacts. The one item that emerges most often as a concern is the impact of
tourism on traffic (Mok et al., 1991; Black and Nickerson, 1997; Lindberg and
Johnson, 1997; Tomljenovic and Faulkner, 2000; Andereck et al., 2005; Dyer
et al., 2007). Other studies report resident concern with crime, drugs (Mok
et al., 1991; King et al., 1993), litter (Lankford and Howard, 1994; Snaith and
Haley, 1995), noise pollution (Dyer et al., 2007), crowding of public facilities
and resources (McCool and Martin, 1994), increased prostitution, vandalism
(Liu et al., 1987), degradation of morality (Mok et al., 1991), alcohol, openness