Residents’ support for sustainable tourism development at a world heritage site: a case of Lenggong Valley

Stakeholders’ support especially local residents are crucial for the success of sustainable tourism development within a World Heritage Site (WHS). Without their support, it is very difficult for the government and destination management organizations to plan and develop WHS in a sustainable manner. Various problems were identified in the literature as a result of lack of support from local residents including costly future conflicts, retribution, hostile tourist-host relationship, vandalism, and unsustainable use of resources. Moreover, active opposition from the local residents has also been found to hamper development. Most importantly, existing studies on support for tourism development tend to focus on planning and development for tourism in general without specifying the types of tourism resources. On the other hand, this study focused on support for sustainable tourism development within WHS which were very limited despite its importance. The data in this study was gathered based on responses from self-administered questionnaires distributed to 401 local residents of Lenggong District. A number of factors were examined and found to influence support, including community attachment, local economic condition, and trust in government institutions, except for community involvement. Besides that, perception towards Lenggong Valley’s WHS recognition was also confirmed to play both partial and full mediation on the relationships between the above factors and support for sustainable tourism development. In general, the result of analysis suggests that the majority of respondents have high support for sustainable tourism development within and around Lenggong Valley WHS. On top of that, this study has successfully utilised social exchange theory as the foundation in explaining residents’ support for sustainable tourism development. The findings of this study could be used as a model of reference for government in assessing the local situations pertinent to residents’ perceptions and support for sustainable tourism development in the case of WHS. The outcomes of the study may also be used in the formulation of appropriate planning and development strategies for heritage tourism via bottom-up approach