A Study on The Attitudes of Wang-Kung Residents to Tourism Development

[[abstract]]Resident?s perceptions of tourism impact and attitude toward tourism development are an important topic in tourism research. Past researches on this issue mostly used the demographic characteristics of resident as explanatory variables. Ko & Stewart (2002) proposed a conceptual framework that include five latent variables: personal benefits from tourism development, perceived positive tourism impacts, perceived negative tourism impacts, overall community satisfaction, and attitudes for additional tourism development to extend such research both in theory and practice, and provide more insights to resident behavior and local tourism development. The purpose of this research is to re-test Ko et al.?s structural model by using the case of Wang-Kung, a well-known tourist destination located in the southern area of Taiwan.The data collection yielded 300 valid responses. The results indicated that only three path hypothesis were supported by Wang-Kung area, i.e., ?personal benefits from tourism development? are positively related to ?positive perceived tourism impacts?, ?positive perceived tourism impacts? are positively related to ?attitude for additional tourism development?, and ?overall community satisfaction? are positively related to ?attitude for additional tourism development?