Measuring the perceived impacts of tourism: a scale development study

Abstract

Tourism brings with it several positive and negative impacts on destination communities. However, the real impacts of tourism are different from residents’ perspectives, which are shaped by multiple factors. The literature asserted a need for a more resident-oriented evaluation of tourism impacts, and this study aimed to develop and validate a scale to measure residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts following the inductive scale development process. The steps of the study included the generation of items, purification of items, and testing the reliability and validity of the scale. The results confirmed the validity of the residents’ perceptions scale that can be used in tourism research and practice to evaluate the impacts of tourism on residents’ communities.