Government management of tourism in fostering residents support for sustainable tourism development: Evidence from a Portuguese historic town

摘要

This study proposes a conceptual framework that explores thecorrelations between economic dependence (ED), local governmentmanagement of tourism (GMT), perceived tourism benefits and costs, andsupport for sustainable tourism development (STD). A quantitative researchdesign was adopted. Data collection was carried out by personal survey appliedto 300 residents of the small historic town of Lamego, located within the DouroValley World Heritage Site. Structural equation modelling methods wereemployed to analyse the proposed model. Results suggest that GMT has asignificant effect on the perceived impacts of tourism, both in the positive andin the negative. The effect of GMT in fostering residents’ support to STD wasalso empirically supported. Additionally, it was also determined that positiveperceptions of the impacts of tourism directly influence support to STD.Nevertheless, ED does not have a significant effect either on perceivedbenefits, nor on perceived costs or on residents’ support to STD. Likewise,perceptions of the negative impacts do not predict residents’ support to STD.