The Study of Peng-hu Residents Attitudes toward Marine Sport Tourim Developement

[[abstract]]This study based on the social exchange theory and designed to explore the factors influencing Penghu residents’ agreements for marine sport tourism. The study was divided into two stages: in the first stage, the study adopted Delphi method was invited 11 scholars and experts to conduct the items of the questionnaire from March 4th to April 24th, 2009. Then, the researcher collected 600 local residents who are over 20 years old as the subjects for gathering the data via “Questionnaire of Penghu Residents Attitudes toward Marine Sport Tourism Development”. According to the data collected from the questionnaire, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s product moment correlation, canonical correlation analysis, and stepwise multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The results were derived as the follows: 1.Due to the economic benefits and industrial development from marine sport tourism, residents approved the positive value in general; moreover, residents showed highly support toward marine sport tourism. 2.The percentage of marine-sport-tourism industry in individual income would influence the support for marine sport tourism; also, it is conformed with the principle of social exchange theory as well. 3.Each dimension of social exchange factors was significantly correlated with each dimension of the assessment of marine-sport-tourism impacts. Besides, “value affirmative” and “positive physical environmental impact” dimensions were especially apparent and demonstrated middle positive correlations. 4.Social exchange factors were quite correlated with evaluation of marine-sport-tourism impacts dimensions. 5.Social exchange factors and evaluation of marine-sport-tourism impacts significantly influenced residents’ supports for marine sport tourism; furthermore, the “positive physical environmental impact” of evaluation of marine sport tourism impacts had the best prediction to the residents’ support for marine sport tourism. According to the result, it is suggested that local government and the related tourism organizations should establish correlated ordinances to decrease marine sport tourism negative impacts and make the beneficial distributions from marine-sport-tourism industrial fair to strengthen residents’ support for marine sport tourism. For further research in the future, it is recommended that the study is needed to incorporate the follow-up issues of residents’ support for marine sport tourism, and to pay equal attention to qualitative research and quantitative research for investigating more social exchange factors. In addition, it is suggested that it is applied longitudinal research to examine the explanatory power of social exchange factors in order to deepen the research connotation.