The Impact of Place Attachment and Community Involvement on Local People’s Perception of Cultural Heritage Sites and Support for Tourism Development: The Case of Göbeklitepe

Abstract

The support of local people to tourism development is necessary for the sustainable tourism success of destinations. Local people may perceive tourism development positively or negatively under the influence of certain factors. Place attachment, community participation, locality, residence time, environmental attitude, life satisfaction, image, demographic characteristics and so on can be given as examples of these influential factors. The aim of this study is to determine the factors (place attachment and community participation) that affect the positive and negative perceptions of the local people regarding the support for tourism development, in the example of World Heritage Site Göbeklitepe. In this context, data were obtained by conducting face-toface and online 479 surveys in Şanlıurfa. The relations between the variables were tested with the structural equation modeling method. As a result, place attachment did not have a positive effect on the perceived positive effects of tourism, whereas it had a significant effect on local people’s perceptions of the negative effects of tourism. It has been determined that community involvement has a positive effect on the perceived positive effects of tourism and supporting tourism development, and a negative effect on the perceived negative effects of tourism. Positive perception of tourism affects support for tourism development positively, while negative perception affects support negatively.