Residents’ Attitudes Towards Tourism: The Case of Şanlıurfa

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the residents’ perspective on tourism. A questionnaire was applied to 395 people residing in Şanlıurfa province. Survey; It consists of 9 demographic and 42 attitude questions. By applying factor analysis, attitude questions were reduced to seven different dimensions. It consists of seven dimensions, full participation of people in tourism-related decisions, social cost of tourism, long-term planning in tourism, visitor satisfaction, community centric economy, environmental sustainability, social cost of tourism. According to the results obtained, the personal characteristics (gender, education, age, income, marital status) and their attitudes towards certain dimensions differ. In addition, there was no significant relationship between the environmental sustainability dimension and the residence time of the participants in Şanlıurfa and their attitude scores. A statistically significant difference was found only for the social cost dimension of tourism with the income of the participants from tourism. With the participants going on vacation, a meaningful difference was obtained only for the economic benefit dimension of tourism.