Local Perception of Impact-Attitudes-Actions towards Tourism Development in the Urlaubsregion Murtal in Austria

Local residents are always the recipients of economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts from tourism development. Residents’ perceived impacts, attitudes towards tourism and the resultant supportive or opposing actions collectively affect the success of tourism, but are not thoroughly understood especially in small regions with rapid growth. The study investigated how the tourism impacts receive local perception, determine local attitudes and in turn lead to active or passive supportive action. The predisposition of linkage between attitude and behaviour is explored with the underlying aspects of impacts. Through the establishment of hypotheses of the relationship and an empirical survey-based study in Urlaubsregion Murtal (URM) in Austria, findings from local populations suggest that local attitude is significantly influenced by tourism impacts. In particular, socio-cultural impacts influenced attitude to a greater extent than the economic and environmental dimensions. The overall prevalent residents’ attitude in the URM is highly positive as the respondents indicated a sense of openness towards tourism development and the vast majority agreed that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. A significant positive relationship between attitude and support is detected. However, the residents also intended to act more passively than actively to supporting tourism development, but the connection from attitude to specific active or passive actions is not apparent