Perception of the Resident Population towards Tourist Presence: A Survey Research in Alcossebre, Castellón, Spain

Abstract

This empirical research has as main objective to analyze the perceptions of resident population of Alcossebre, on Spanish Mediterranean, in order to design and enrich a set of material flows indicators for the thesis “Sustainable Planning for tourist coastal places”. The impacts that presence of tourists has on their personal lives and in natural and urban environments, can be known by observing their feelings towards its effects on economic, social and environmental aspects. The guiding hypothesis is to test whether this formal process of collecting, analyzing and interpreting information from residents of Alcossebre about their tourism impacts perception, can help to identify current problems caused by tourist presence, as the residents perceive. The results of the survey aims at a better understanding of experiences and attitudes of residents towards visitors and optimizes the quality decision-making process for Sustainable Tourism planning. A 13 questions questionnaire was applied to 367 residents during the late three months in 2014. Trends of the most probably answers on topics of interest could be useful to interpret and predict people´s reaction about future actions for sustainable tourism development. Findings show that people have a positive behavior toward tourism due to the socio-economic benefits. Even they recognize its negative effects, but the most important environmental damages are not to tourist attributed. The results contribute to propose and validate some materials flows indicators for the proposed set in the thesis. Besides, these results improve its quality and enrich the decision-making supporting tool for planning.

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Author Information
María de las Nieves Suárez Sánchez, Polytechnical University of Catalonia, Spain
Lloveras, J., Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain

• Category: Social Sustainability and Sustainable Living

Posted by James Alexander Gordon

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