Residents’ impact perceptions of and attitudes towards tourism development: a meta-analysis

Applying a meta-analysis approach, this study examines the applicability of SET on explaining residents’ impact perceptions of and attitudes toward tourism development. Findings confirm the applicability of SET in tourism impact studies when assessing the impacts of perceived benefits (positive impacts) on support. Findings reveal that perceived benefits produce substantial effects on support while perceived costs (negative impacts) have trivial effects, which suggest that measures and indicators used to assess residents perceptions of perceived costs (negative impacts) may have validity problems. Moreover, a closer examination of the mean effects of five exogenous determinants of impact perceptions reveal that none of those variables have significant effects on the perceptions of negative impacts further suggesting possible problems with the operationalization of negative impact perceptions. Findings clearly suggest that a closer examination of the measurement items used to assess the negative impact perceptions of tourism impacts is needed.