Assessing the Residents’ Anti-tourism Attitudes to Tourism Development in Smart Tourism Cities

This study investigates the residents’ perceptions of governance and technology in tourism operation as well as economic, social, environmental and cultural benefits or costs, and adopt a multi-analytical approach. The first step empirically tests the effect of residents’ perceptions of tourism on their anti-tourism attitude by using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) (symmetric analysis). The second step tests a configural model with a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) (asymmetric analysis). Data were collected through a survey of 221 residents, and the perceptions were adopted from the sustainable tourism attitude scale (SUSTAS) and divided into two categories: perceived benefits and perceived costs. Both analyses show perceived benefits are stronger predictors than perceived costs. That is, residents’ negative attitudes are more likely to result from the absence of perceived benefits than from the presence of perceived costs. Based on these results, this study provides researchers and policy makers with theoretical and practical implications.