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Tourism in the
Perceptions of tourism: a study of city of Girona
residents’ attitudes towards
tourism in the city of Girona
Sira Vidal Rua 165
Department of Organisation, Business Management and Product Design,
University of Girona, Girona, Spain Received 19 March 2019
Revised 9 August 2019
30 October 2019
Accepted 21 January 2020

Abstract
Purpose – Socio-cultural impacts of tourism have been widely researched within a social exchange
theoretical framework, yet it seems that this theory could be neglecting those more emotional elements, which
at the same time could be considered key to understand how tourism affects the society. Therefore, the
purpose of this paper is to look at the social exchange theory (SET) from a different perspective and focus on
those less rational influencing factors that could be shaping residents’ attitudes towards tourism.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on six main constructs, a quantitative survey-based research
is developed in the small city of Girona with the purpose to broaden the versality of the theory, with the
support of in-depth exploratory interviews. Thus, an exhaustive study of the influences that attachment to
communities, involvement in the tourism industry and personal benefits derived from tourism could have on
residents’ perceptions is developed.
Findings – This paper suggests that those smaller tourism destinations might mirror themselves in those
close big tourism destinations and thus residents’ opinions and attitudes seem to be influenced by the
situations lived in these larger tourism destinations. Moreover, this paper stresses on the importance of
interactions and relationships between tourists and residents to boost personal benefits from tourism. Finally,
results show how those attached citizens tend to support tourism development, which could be explained by
the proudness they feel when others value what for them is home.
Originality/value – This paper contributes to the current understanding of attitudes towards tourism
within the SET framework, especially relating to covering those more emotional elements of social
interactions. Moreover, there seems to be a gap in current research relating to small urban destinations that is
aimed to be covered in this research.
Keywords Perceptions, Tourism, Attitudes, Social exchange theory, Residents,
Socio-cultural impacts
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Tourism is proven to be crucial for the global economic development (World Tourism
Organization, 2018; World Travel and Tourism Council, 2018), yet it is a very transversal
industry that affects not only the economy of a destination but also its environment, its
society and its culture. This paper focusses on those socio-cultural aspects of tourism as it

© Sira Vidal Rua. Published in Journal of Tourism Analysis: Revista de Análisis Turístico. Published
by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution
(CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this Journal of Tourism Analysis:
article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original Revista de Análisis Turístico
Vol. 27 No. 2, 2020
publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/ pp. 165-184
licences/by/4.0/legalcode Emerald Publishing Limited
2254-0644
Funding: This work was supported by the Girona City Council. DOI 10.1108/JTA-03-2019-0015
JTA aims at contributing to generate knowledge on the resident’s perceptions of tourism. While
27,2 “host” communities are expected to offer a friendly welcome, this hospitality could be
turning into hostility in some tourism destinations (Pizam, 1978; Deery et al., 2012), which is
rather distinguished by unfriendly behaviours. Therefore, knowledge on residents’
perceptions is relevant for both the well-being of the local communities (Gursoy and
Rutherford, 2004; Andereck et al., 2007) and for the development of tourism in a sustainable
166 manner (Deery et al., 2012; Williams and Lawson, 2001).
Social exchange theory (here and after referred to as SET) has been the theoretical
framework base of most of the studies on relations between tourism and local communities
(Andereck et al., 2005; Deery et al., 2012). This theory states that in any interaction, there will
be an exchange of resources only if individuals perceive that they will gain something from
it (Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004; Andereck et al., 2005). However, this theory has been
criticized (Andereck et al., 2005) for focusing mainly on mere cognitive and rational elements
of transactions between residents and tourists. A key rational for doing this research is the
thought that there could be far more aspects to be considered to understand local
communities’ attitudes towards tourism than what is considered within SET’s rational
perspective. Other researchers (Boley et al., 2014; Moscardo, 2011; Williams and Lawson,
2001) seem to have had similar thoughts, as they aim at turning the attention away from
rational transactions towards how locals feel and think regarding tourism.
While some authors argue that research on attitudes towards tourism is overly done in
rural areas (Gursoy et al., 2002), the importance of urban tourism in European cities has not
ceased since the 1990’s (Law, 1992; Valls et al., 2014). While the global tourism increase rate
was of 7 per cent (World Tourism Organization, 2018) from 2017 to 2018, tourism in
European cities increased by 7.5 per cent (European Cities Marketing, 2018). The fact that
urban tourism is that widespread is peculiarly contrasted with the current emphasis given
by researchers to rural areas, which stresses the need for developing more studies in urban
contexts.
The role of low-cost airlines has been key, as they not only have enabled short trips or
city breaks across Europe (Valls et al., 2014; Bellini and Pasquinelli, 2017), but they have also
raised awareness of the existence of less popular cities, which expands and distributes
tourists across the continent (Dunne et al., 2007). Even though dissemination of tourism
throughout smaller cities can bring many benefits, it also raises concerns due to high
concentrations of tourism activities in confined spaces. The arousal of manifestations of
discomfort (such as anti-tourism marches) have instigated governments to launch policies to
better regulate tourism in destinations such as Mallorca and San Sebastian in Spain,
Dubrovnik in Croatia, or Florence in Italy (Coldwell, 2017; Kettle, 2017). Strategic plans for
tourism are being applied in some tourism destinations, which could be considered as a good
starting point towards a more sustainable management. Yet, there seems to be still space for
these measures to go beyond “dealing with” the problems caused by tourism, as it seems
that, at least some of them, could be prevented. Hence, a shift towards identifying which are
the possible causes for social unrests could be a good next step to prevent these discomforts.
Considering that understanding how residents perceive tourism may facilitate a more
proactive tourism planning and management decisions (Tovar and Lockwood, 2008;
Deery et al., 2012), this paper aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of some of the
possible reasons of residents’ attitudes in a medium/small city towards tourism.
With this purpose, this research is developed in Girona, which is a small city located in
the north-east of Spain, the second country in the world with more international arrivals
(World Travel Organization, 2018; p. 8) and one of the countries most affected by clashes
between residents and tourists (Burgen, 2017a, 2017b; Coldwell, 2017; Kettle, 2017). With
100,266 inhabitants (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2018)[1], Girona is the capital of the Tourism in the
province, named after the city, known for its beaches in Costa Brava. Even though Girona city of Girona
does not suffer from major conflicts between residents and tourism, some voices of concern
are raised in the city and few banners showing discomfort with the tourism activity have
appeared in the city centre (Carreras and Pastells, 2017; Pastells, 2017).
These manifestations can be considered as an evidence of changing attitudes towards
tourism, which makes one question why this might be happening, especially if these
attitudes become negative. To this end, the following research question is formulated: 167
RQ1. How do residents of Girona perceive tourism? And what are the possible reasons
behind these perceptions?
Considering that attitudes constantly evolve and that they are not always rational, the
purpose of this research is not to give a final list of reasons why residents might hold one
attitude or another, but to develop a deeper understanding on elements related to tourism
that are more likely to have an impact on them. Moreover, the research will contribute in
expanding the existing literature on SET, as it intends to include non-transactional elements
such as moral values and emotions that may influence locals’ attitudes.

Theoretical framework
As it will be discussed in the methodology section, this research is conceived as a
quantitative survey-based research supported by qualitative interviews. The quality of
surveys depends not only on the adequate numbers of respondents, but also on the extent to
which the questionnaire measures the most appropriate concepts in the best possible way
(validity). This is one of the reasons why quantitative research tends to prioritize being
strongly supported by theory over covering a wide range of relevant research topics (Walle,
1997). Thus, it was considered imperative to minimize the number of concepts and
constructs covered to achieve a duly theoretically grounded questionnaire.
This approach could be defined as reductionist. Reductionism is defined as a “viewpoint
that regards one phenomenon as entirely explainable by the properties of another
phenomenon” (Ratner, 2012). Following this line of thought, it is pursued to investigate how
few very carefully selected constructs contribute to generate knowledge about how attitudes
towards tourism are formed. Therefore, the questionnaire is based on six constructs that,
based on literature reviews and on in-depth interviews, are considered the most relevant
elements influencing Girona residents’ attitudes towards tourism development. Figure 1
outlines which constructs are considered to have greater explanatory power and the
relationships expected to be found between each other. Due to the reductionistic approach
undertaken, only the variables included in Figure 1 are subject to analysis.
Tourism developers seek to boost support for tourism because it is essential for a
sustainable tourism development (Tosun, 2002; Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004; Deery et al.,
2012). Following the premise of SET, support towards tourism should be the result of
weighting the benefits and costs derived from the activity. Therefore, in this research it is
considered that perceived benefits from tourism and perceived costs from tourism directly
influence residents’ support towards it. Support for tourism was analysed using a scale
adapted from Nunkoo and So (2016), as it can be seen in Table I.
Perceived negative impacts of tourism are considered “costs” within the SET framework,
and thus both terms are used interchangeably in this article. According to SET, the negative
impacts perceived from tourism will have a negative influence on their support towards the
industry. Several authors have examined these relationships (Perdue et al., 1990; Jurowski
et al., 1997; Gursoy et al., 2002; Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004; Nunkoo and So, 2016), yet
JTA
27,2

168

Figure 1.
Expected
relationships between
constructs

many with not so conclusive results. While academics have found negative causal
relationships between these two variables, they were not statistically significant (Gursoy
et al., 2002; Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004; Nunkoo and So, 2016; Su et al., 2018). To measure
perceived negative impacts, the questionnaire includes questions relating to the increased
prices of housing (Jurowski et al., 1997; Tovar and Lockwood, 2008); the increased prices of
goods and services (Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004; Jurowski et al., 1997; Nunkoo and So,
2016); the pedestrian congestions (Brunt and Courtney, 1999; Lindberg and Johnson, 1997;
McCool and Lime, 2001); the increased noise (Andereck et al., 2005; Brunt and Courtney,
1999; Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004); the increased pollution (Gursoy et al., 2002; Andereck
et al., 2005); and the changes in the physical appearance of the city (Lindberg and Johnson,
1997).
Following the same line of thought as for the perceived negative impacts from tourism,
SET implies that the perceived positive impacts from tourism will positively influence their
support towards it. In the same way as the term “costs” is used to refer to perceived negative
impacts, the term “benefits” is also used to refer to perceived positive impacts of tourism
along this paper. Significant causal relationships between perceived benefits of tourism and
support towards have been found by several authors (Gursoy et al., 2002; Gursoy and
Rutherford, 2004; Jurowski et al., 1997; Nunkoo and So, 2016), which seems to contrast with
the non-significant relationships found between the negative impacts of tourism and
support towards the industry. Benefits of tourism were examined through residents’
perceptions on increased employment (Gursoy et al., 2002; Jurowski et al., 1997), or on
increased business opportunities (Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004; Nunkoo and So, 2016). In
addition, questions relating to the improved appearance of the city thanks to tourism
(Andereck et al., 2005; Perdue et al., 1990), the increased leisure opportunities due to tourism
(Brunt and Courtney, 1999; Gursoy et al., 2002), or the increased opportunities for socializing
(Andereck et al., 2005; Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004; Jurowski et al., 1997) were included in
the questionnaire.
This research also analyses the influence that personal benefits from tourism, involvement in
tourism, and attachment to communities might have on the perceived impacts of tourism.
Regarding personal benefits, several authors (Andereck et al., 2005; Jurowski et al., 1997;
Lankford and Howard, 1994; Nunkoo and So, 2016) have analysed the relationships that they
have with perceived impacts from the industry. Most studies have found positive and
significant relationships between personal benefits and perceived positive impacts from
tourism (Andereck et al., 2005; Brunt and Courtney, 1999; Nunkoo and So, 2016). Economic
Variables Indicators
Tourism in the
city of Girona
Support for tourism Tourism is one of the most important industry for my community
Tourism helps my community grow
Tourism helps my community grow in the right direction
Tourism plays an important economic role in my community
I am proud that tourists are coming to my community
I support the development of tourism as it is vital to my community 169
My community should try to attract more tourists
Perceived negative Increased prices of goods and services
impacts from tourism Increased prices of rents
Increased noises
Increased congestions
Arousal of souvenir shops and cafes aimed at tourists instead of establishments
aimed at locals
Perceived positive Increased employment opportunities for locals
impacts from tourism Increased opportunities for local businesses
Improved appearance of the city
Increased opportunities for leisure
Increased opportunities for socializing
Attachment to community Length of residence
Feelings of moving away
Feeling of being “at home”
Interest on what is going on
Involvement in the Level of knowledge about tourism development in Girona
tourism industry Level of knowledge about tourists in Girona
Level of knowledge on tourism impacts
Development of friendship with tourists
Frequency of visitation to tourism areas
Involvement in decision-making process
Personal benefits from Meet more people and learn from other cultures
tourism There are more bars and restaurants I can go to Table I.
Employed thanks to tourism Variables and
Tourism contributes to household income indicators

personal benefits were analysed by examining the degree to which respondents’ household
income came from tourism (Andereck et al., 2005; Jurowski et al., 1997) and if they were directly
employed by the tourism industry (Lankford and Howard, 1994). However, those non-economic
personal benefits from tourism were more difficult to describe:
 first, because they refer to more emotional elements; and
 second because the line between benefits for the community and personal benefits
can be blurry.

In fact, some interviewees did not even consider they could personally benefit from tourism
in a non-economic manner. In addition, literature seems vague when it comes to describing
non-economic personal benefits. While many authors have examined self-reported personal
benefits of tourism (Nunkoo and So, 2016; Perdue et al., 1990; Andereck et al., 2005) it seemed
more accurate to describe the concrete gains that one can obtain from the industry. Based on
the interviews, it seemed interesting to analyse whether residents perceive that they
personally benefit from more leisure opportunities thanks to tourism, as well as if they
perceive that they personally have more opportunities to learn from other cultures thanks to
tourism.
JTA On the other hand, involvement in the tourism industry is a very complex and broad
27,2 concept. Andereck et al. (2005) suggest that engagement with the tourism industry could be
assessed through the following variables: the level of knowledge about tourism, the level of
contact with tourists, the degree of involvement in decision-making processes, and the
distance of residents’ home from the tourism centre. This study attempted to measure
involvement in the tourism industry through these variables, excluding the distance of
170 residents’ home from the tourism centre as it was included in the questionnaire as a
demographic question. Following this line of thought, the first variable within involvement
in the tourism industry is knowledge about tourism, which has been studied by several
authors (Davis et al., 1988; Lankford and Howard, 1994; Andereck et al., 2005; Nunkoo and
So, 2016). However, while some authors (Davis et al., 1988) found that those less
knowledgeable were the less supportive, others (Nunkoo and So, 2016) found the opposite.
These discrepancies are not surprising since there seems to be no standardized measure of
knowledge, and the usage of different scales makes it difficult to compare results among
studies. For the purpose of this research, the scale to measure knowledge was adapted from
Nunkoo and So (2016), as it can be seen in Table I.
In relation to the level of involvement in the tourism decision-making process, several
studies (Lankford and Howard, 1994; Andereck et al., 2005, 2007; Nunkoo and So, 2016;
Lankford and Howard, 1994; Andereck et al., 2005, 2007; Nunkoo and So, 2016) found that
those citizens more involved in the tourism industry perceive more positive impacts from
tourism than those who are not. These findings suggest that more participative approaches
from local governments could help raise and maintain more positive attitudes towards
tourism. Girona City Hall seems to be very aware of this and seems to be making efforts to
involve communities in the decision-making process, yet some interviewees felt that their
opinions were being asked but not listened to. Additionally, the level of contact with tourists
has been found to be positively related with being more supportive towards tourism
development (Andereck et al., 2005; Kayat, 2002; Lankford and Howard, 1994). Table I
shows the scale used to measure this construct that is adapted from Lankford and Howard
(1994). In sum, it is expected that those residents more involved in the tourism industry
would perceive more benefits from the industry and hence, be more supportive.
Finally, several academics have shown interest in understanding the influence that
attachment to communities might have on the residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts, and
ultimately, on their support for it (Andereck et al., 2005; McCool and Martin, 1994; Williams
and Lawson, 2001). Even though some authors suggest that those citizens more attached to
their communities will perceive less benefits from tourism (Lankford and Howard, 1994);
others advocate that those more attached will perceive more benefits (Pizam, 1978; Jurowski
et al., 1997; Gursoy et al., 2002; Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004). Based on the exploratory
interviews, the latter should be expected within Girona residents. As it can be seen in
Table I, the questionnaire adapts the scale used by several researchers (McCool and Martin,
1994; Gursoy et al., 2002; Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004) to analyse attachment to
communities, as it is considered as an accurate scale of measurement.

Methodology
This research is guided by a post-positivism standpoint. Hence, it is acknowledged that
reality exists but cannot be known in a perfect manner (critical realism) and that, even if the
researcher aims at being objective, there can always be uncontrolled interferences between
what is analysed and the researcher (modified objectivism), which will inevitably lead to
some degree of subjectivism. Following this line of thought, it is acknowledged that not all
the variables can be controlled, and hence, the methodological standpoint guiding this
research is the modified/manipulative. In accordance to these considerations, the research is Tourism in the
designed as a correlational research based on a survey. city of Girona
Therefore, with the purpose of developing a theoretically grounded survey, exploratory
interviews were first aimed at identifying those more relevant elements for Girona residents,
which jointly with an in-depth literature review, were the main inputs for building the
questionnaire. Moreover, before distributing the survey, a pilot test was run to assess
validity issues. Finally, the survey was distributed and analysed. The research process
followed can be seen outlined in Figure 2. 171
Interviews were conducted with nine citizens of Girona: three men and six women
between the ages of 21 and 71. These interviews were first conceptualized as in-depth and
unstructured, then evolved towards semi-structured interviews, and eventually formed the
questionnaire in which the survey was based.
The design of the questionnaire was aimed at obtaining high rates of response and at
achieving high degrees of validity and reliability. As the questionnaire was distributed in
Catalan, Spanish and English, efforts were made to reduce language biases. Since the
literature in which the questions are based is in English, the questionnaire was first built in
this language. Qualitative interviews were conducted in Catalan, which allowed for checking
if interviewees were understanding the meaning of the questions, and if these questions
conveyed very similar connotations to each interviewee. However, interviews were not
conducted in Spanish, which could contribute to a higher degree of language bias along the
survey.

External validity
External validity refers to the generalizability of the findings (Daniel, 2010b), which means
that it examines the extent to which the results obtained will be significative for the whole
population of Girona. Considering that the universe for the survey comprises all the adult
citizens of Girona, which is 80.093 [calculated from Instituto Nacional de Estadística (2011)
and Instituto Nacional de Estadística (2018)], the ideal sampling list would have been the
census list of the city, but it was not possible to access it (or any other population list) due to
protection policies. Thus, the best alternative was to use a convenience sampling process,
which is a type of non-probability sampling process. This was prioritized to obtain enough
responses to guarantee external validity and to reduce random error, yet non-probability
sampling implies higher probabilities of sampling bias. In addition, it was more pragmatic
to distribute the questionnaires only through an online link and through a QR code, which
also contributes to increase sampling biases.

Reliability
Reliability refers to consistency, which means that after repeating the same test, it will yield
the same results (Behar-Horenstein and Dix, 2010). This is one of the reasons why it is
important to obtain an adequate number of respondents. On the other hand, the reliability of
the measurement scales should also be addressed (Bhattacherjee, 2012; Hair et al., 2013).

LITERATURE
REVIEW PILOT TEST
CONSTRUCTION
+ +
OF SURVEY ANALYSIS
QUALITATIVE SAMPLING
QUESTIONNAIRE
INTERVIEWS STRATEGY Figure 2.
Research design
JTA Five-point scales were used in this research to measure each variable. Given that the
27,2 constructs analysed were adapted from existing literature, and that most of the studies use
Likert-type scales (Gursoy et al., 2002; Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004; Andereck et al., 2007), it
seemed reasonable that the same scale was used in this paper.
For an accurate measurement, the anchors of the scales were balanced (Dillman et al.,
2008; Bhattacherjee, 2012), and usually ranging from “not at all” to “completely”, except for
172 those measuring support towards tourism, as it made more sense to use statements ranging
from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. Moreover, the option “I do not know” was
added for the items measuring the perceived impacts of tourism (both positive and
negative). Length of residence was the only indicator that could not be measured using
Likert-scales, thus it was measured using five-years intervals scaled question. This design
did not work as expected, as it will be explained below.

Validity
Validity refers to the accuracy of the methods used, which means that validity evaluates the
extent to which the methods measure what they are aimed to measure (Daniel, 2010a). The
first step to assess validity was to reflexively review literature on residents’ attitudes
towards tourism and base each of the theoretical constructs on this literature to achieve
accurate definitions of each concept. Moreover, the questionnaire was reviewed by a
researcher and two Master students.
Exploratory interviews were used to assure that the respondents of the questionnaire
would understand all the questions in the same way (or very similar). Moreover, an
attention-check question was incorporated in the questionnaire with the purpose to identify
those respondents that might be inattentive. Finally, a pilot test was conducted before
distributing the survey. However, even if some arrangements were done to ensure the
validity of the questions, the pilot test could have been better assessed and more
arrangements could have been done before distributing the survey to assure that each
construct measured what it was aimed to measure, since some items resulted to be not valid,
as it is described in the analysis.

Methods of analysis
There are extremely sophisticated statistics that one can do, but considering the knowledge
on statistics of the researcher, the statistics conducted in this research are simple. Moreover,
the results are interpreted in a very careful manner considering the external validity of the
data, and because it cannot be assured that the results perfectly describe reality. To assess
the data collected using statistical methods, the SPSS software was used.
Factor analysis was used to assess the validity of the scales. Factor analysis is a
statistical method used to reduce items into larger variables (latent variables) based on the
bi-variate correlations existent between the items (Bhattacherjee, 2012; Baggio and Klobas,
2017). This method was used to check if the items meant to measure a variable were indeed
measuring it (validity). In this manner, each item should load at least with a value of 0.5 or
more with a latent variable to be considered practically significant (Hair et al., 2013, p. 115).
On the other hand, Cronbach alpha was used to assess the reliability of the scales.
Cronbach alpha is a method used to assess the internal consistency of a construct
(Bhattacherjee, 2012). It has been generally agreed in statistical research that those
Cronbach alpha coefficients greater than 0.7 are internally consistent (Hair et al., 2013,
p. 123), thus this is the value used to assess the reliability of the scales.
Finally, bi-variate analyses were run to assess the relationships between each pair of
variables. Existing research usually seeks causal relationships between the variables, yet
this research focuses on correlations and tries to identify possible explanations on the Tourism in the
qualitative interviews. A positive relationship exists when the correlation coefficient is city of Girona
positive, and a negative relationship exits when the correlation coefficient is negative.
Moreover, the p-value expresses the probability that a correlation is caused by chance
(Bhattacherjee, 2012). Therefore, p-value is used to reject the null hypothesis of no
relationship, which is commonly rejected for those p-values smaller than 0.005
(Bhattacherjee, 2012). In this study, the discussion is based on those statistically significant
173
relationships, namely those with p-values smaller than 0.005.

Analysis and results

The data obtained from the survey should be cleansed before doing any kind of analysis.
With this purpose, the first lines of this section are aimed at describing how the external
validity and the quality of the data were assessed. Afterwards, factor analysis and Cronbach
alpha are described, followed by the hypotheses testing process through bi-variate analysis.
The external validity of the data was assessed through the demographic questions
included in the survey, which was distributed to 686 people. From these, only 253 completed
the questionnaire, which represents a 37 per cent of response rate. Considering that after the
factor analysis only 190 questionnaires could be used for the analysis, the sampling error
was of 67.1 per cent with a confidence interval of 95 per cent, which is a commonly accepted
precision level (Salant and Dillman, 1994). With 83 per cent of respondents aged between 21
and 60, there seemed to be an underrepresentation of children and elderly people, which
could be due to the fact that the survey was addressed to legal adults, and that it was
distributed online, which is less accessible for older generations (Dillman et al., 2008). On the
other hand, there was an overrepresentation of women (71 per cent) and of some of the
neighbourhoods of Girona. These sample errors were consequence of using a non-
probability sampling process, that contributed to give more voice to those citizens who
might have more to say, as for example those citizens living in the city Centre, where
tourism is much more present than in other neighbourhoods.
Considering the demographics of the sample, it seems that generalization of the results
obtained to other populations should be supported with further research, as this sample is
not perfectly unbiassed. On the other hand, 229 (90.5 per cent) of the respondents answered
the questionnaire in Catalan, which reduced (although not supressed) the potential biases
due to language differences, because the questionnaire was built following the inputs from
the interviews conducted in Catalan.
To assess the quality of the data, the first step was to convert the answers “I do not know”
into missing values in order not to distort the results. Moreover, the survey included an
attention-check question to assess the validity of the responses. It had been conceived as
follows: “Do you think that Girona should reduce the number of tourists?”, which was the
opposite to one of the items measuring support towards tourism: “Do you think Girona
should attract more tourists?”. Thirty-six respondents had answered the same in both
questions, whereof twenty-eight had given the neutral answer “I neither agree nor disagree”,
and which were considered as valid answers. From the eight remaining respondents, six
voiced that they disagree with both statements, while two stated to approve both the
reduction of tourists and the attraction of more tourists. These eight respondents were
analysed individually to identify any erroneous patterns, yet they did not appear to be using
uniform patterns nor responding inconsistently, based on the judgement of the researcher.
Therefore, it was decided not to modify the database to avoid researcher biases. Moreover,
during the qualitative interviews, some of the interviewees expressed contradictory feelings
JTA regarding to whether there should be more tourists or not. Thus, it was considered as a
27,2 possible explanation that these eight respondents had contradictory opinions on this matter.
As mentioned above, factor analysis was used to assess the validity of the each variable
(Bhattacherjee, 2012; Baggio and Klobas, 2017). However, before conducting the factor
analysis, each indicator was briefly examined, and it was observed that “length of
residence” was not well constructed and it was not possible to include this important item in
174 the analyses. Moreover, after running an initial factor analysis, it was decided to dismiss the
item measuring the frequency of visitation to tourism areas because it was cross loading on
more than one factor with rather weak loads and, thus, it was not possible to identify it with
any of the latent variables.
After disregarding this item, the factor analysis indicated that six factors (Table II)
explained 67,8 per cent of the total variance. However, only 190 respondents from the initial
253 were considered to build the six factors. At first glance, these six factors matched with
each of the theoretical block defined in the theoretical framework, which confirmed that they
were well constructed. However, two of the items appeared to be loading with a different
variable than the one they were expected to. Development of friendship with tourists,
seemed to be part of the variable measuring personal benefits instead of involvement in the
industry; while the item “I go more to bars and restaurants” aimed at measuring personal
benefits was highly correlated with perceived positive impacts instead.
A decision was made to maintain both items. On the one hand, it seemed rational to
consider development of friendship as a non-economic personal benefit of tourism. On the
other, it was acknowledged above that the lines between personal benefits and community
benefits can be blurry, especially for those more social elements. Thus, even if “I go more to
bars and restaurants” was meant to measure personal benefits, it was considered that it was
still measuring perceived benefits and that it was meaningful to maintain it.
Moreover, the variable measuring involvement in the tourism industry resulted to be not
valid. Those items aimed at measuring contact with tourism did not correlate strong enough
with the latent variable, while the correlation between participating in the tourism decision-
making process and the latent variable was rather weak. Thus, it seems that the variable
mainly measured knowledge about tourism. However, the strong correlation between being
participative and knowledgeable should not be underestimated as it shows how these two
concepts go together most of the time and that a broader construct can be built based on
them.
Cronbach alpha was the reliability measure used to assess the internal consistency of
these variables. Each of the six coefficients analysed were higher than 0.7, which verified
their reliability (Hair et al., 2013, p. 123).
Once the validity and reliability of each of the variables was reviewed, the distribution of
each of them was briefly examined to obtain a general overview of which might be the
attitudes held by the residents of Girona regarding tourism. However, this is a very simple
summary, especially considering that the sample was not completely unbiased, and that
reality cannot be perfectly known. In this line, the distributions were analysed in terms of
kurtosis, to assess whether the values were concentrated or dispersed; and skewness, to
assess if the distribution was tailed or not, and in which direction (Hair et al., 2013). Table III
exhibits both indicators for all the variables analysed.
The distribution of support towards tourism (Figure 3) shows that most residents are
rather supportive towards tourism, as values are very concentrated (kurtosis of 1.414)
towards the right of the graph (median of 0.14), while a negative tail (skewness of 0.866)
indicates that few residents are very opposed to its development. Looking back at the factor
analysis, support towards tourism is very much defined by those more quantifiable aspects,
 Component
Tourism in the
Rotated component matrix a
1 2 3 4 5 6 city of Girona
SUPPORT - IMP. IND. 0.973
SUPPORT - IMP. ROLE 0.875
SUPPORT - HELPS GROW 0.836
SUPPORT - PROUD OF TOURISTS COMMING 0.747
SUPPORT - SUPPORT DEVELOP. 0.607 175
SUPPORT - SHOULD ATTRACT MORE T. 0.557
SUPPORT - GROW IN RIGHT DIR. 0.541
BENEFITS - OPP. LEISURE 0.880
BENEFITS - MORE EMPLOY. 0.813
BENEFITS - OPP. BUSINESS 0.777
BENEFITS - OPP. SOCIALIZING 0.684
PERSONAL B. - MORE BARS AND REST. I CAN GO 0.679
BENEFITS - APPEARANCE 0.532
COSTS - NOISES 0.939
COSTS - POLLUTION 0.921
COSTS - CONGESTIONS 0.856
COSTS - INC. RENTS 0.671
COSTS - ESTABLISHMENTS FOR TOURISTS 0.529
COSTS - INCR. GOODS&SERVICES 0.429 0.522
INV. - KNOW. TOURISTS IN G 0.850
INV.- KNOW. T. DEVELOP. 0.843
INV. - KNOW. POSSIBLE IMPACTS 0.805
INV.- DEC. MAK. PROCESSES 0.517 0.417
PERSONAL B. - I HAVE A JOB 0.773
PERSONAL B. - MY INCOME DERIVES FROM T. 0.771
INV. - CONTACT-FRIENDSHIP 0.667
PERSONAL B. - MEET PEOPLE and LEARN CULTURES 0.625
ATTACH. - F. OF MOVING 0.847
ATTACH. - I FEEL AT HOME 0.785
Table II.
ATTACH. - INTEREST 0.684
Dimension loadings
Notes: Extraction method: principal components analysis; rotation method: Promax with Kaiser produced by the
normalizationa. aRotation converged in 9 iterations factor analysis

especially those relating to economic growth in the city. These findings support the idea that
it is easier for citizens to identify the economic aspects of tourism than the social ones; and
thus, it is suggested that there is space to enhance the relevance of the later.
Relating to the tourism impacts perceived by residents, it seems like opinions are diverse
in both the negative impacts perceived and the positive ones (kurtosis of benefits is 0.3;
while kurtosis of costs is 0.158). Moreover, both cases show a negative tail (skewness of
benefits is 0.188; while skewness of costs is 0.08) which means that few cases perceive
very little (or no) benefits from tourism, while few other cases perceive very little (or no)

FA2_SUPPORT FA2_BENEFITS FA2_COSTS FA2_INV FA2_PB FA2_ATTACH

Table III.
Median 0.1400272 0.0009623 0.0361121 0.1270571 0.1060703 0.1543804 Median, skewness
Skewness 0.866 0.188 0.080 0.353 0.700 0.508 and kurtosis values
Kurtosis 1.414 0.300 0.158 0.064 0.244 0.142 for each construct
JTA
27,2

176

Figure 3.
Distribution of
support towards
tourism

negative impacts from tourism in their communities. On the other hand, the distribution of
involvement in the tourism industry points that most residents in Girona do not feel very
knowledgeable about the tourism activity in their city, except from few cases who consider
themselves very well informed about it (skewness of 0.353).
Concerning the distribution of personal benefits derived from tourism, it is tailed towards
the right (skewness of 0.7) and very concentrated (kurtosis of 0.244), which indicates how only
few citizens consider that they personally benefit from tourism. Considering how difficult it
was for some interviewees to think of a personal non-economic benefit that they could derive
from tourism, it makes sense that this distribution is positively tailed. Moreover, it highlights
the idea that those non-economic personal benefits could be further widened.
Finally, the distribution of the variable measuring attachment to communities is tailed
towards the left ( 0.508) and rather flat ( 0.142), which means that even if feelings of
attachment are diverse among the respondents, they tend to feel attached to their
communities. Moreover, the disperse results could be caused by the dismissal of the item
measuring length of residence.
As already mentioned, this is just a very simple description of which might be the
opinions held by residents of Girona relating to tourism. In the following lines, the
relationships between each of the variables just described are examined through bivariate
analyses. Table IV shows the correlations found between each of the variables, as well as its
p-value.
This table displays a strong positive and significant relationship (0.608; p = 0.00)
between perceived benefits from tourism and support towards it; as well as it indicates a
negative and significant relationship ( 0.411; p = 0.00) between perceived costs of tourism
and support towards it. Personal benefits appear to be positively related with perceived
benefits (0.366; p = 0.00) and negatively related with perceived costs ( 0.321; p = 0.00). On
the other hand, attachment to communities show a weak positive relationship with
perceived benefits from tourism (0.171; p < 0.018), and no significant relationship with
perceived costs (p > 0.05). However, being involved in the industry (measured mainly
through knowledge about tourism) appears to have a statistically significant relationship
 FA2_SUPPORT FA2_BENEFITS FA2_COSTS FA2_INV FA2_PB FA2_ATTACH

Rho de Spearman
FA2_SUPPORT
Correlation coefficient 1,000 0.608** 0.411** 0.078 ,385** ,315**
p-value 0.000 0.000 0.286 0,000 0,000
N 190 190 190 190 190 190
FA2_BENEFITS
Correlation coefficient 0.608** 1,000 0.251** 0.016 ,366** ,171*
p-value 0,000 0.000 0,826 0,000 0,018
N 190 190 190 190 190 190
FA2_COSTS
Correlation coefficient 0.411** 0.251** 1,000 0.263** ,321** 0,123
p-value 0.000 0,000 0.000 0,000 0,091
N 190 190 190 190 190 190
FA2_INV
Correlation coefficient 0,078 0.016 0.263** 1,000 0,008 0,077
p-value 0.286 0.826 0.000 0,910 0,289
N 190 190 190 190 190 190
FA2_PB
Correlation coefficient 0.385** 0.366** 0.321** 0,008 1,000 0,133
p-value 0,000 0,000 0.000 0.910 0,067
N 190 190 190 190 190 190
FA2_ATTACH
Correlation coefficient 0.315** 0.171* 0.123 0.077 0,133 1,000
p-value 0.000 0.018 0.091 0.289 0,067
N 190 190 190 190 190 190

Notes: **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (two-tailed); *Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (two-tailed)

coefficients between
Table IV.

the constructs, and

177
city of Girona

analysis
Tourism in the

from the bivariate

p-values, resulting
Correlation
JTA only with perceived costs, and it is a positive relationship (0.263, p = 0.00), which is the
27,2 opposite of what was expected.
Finally, three new relationships are found: personal benefits from tourism show a direct
positive relationship with support towards tourism (0.385; p < 0); attachment to
communities also exhibits a direct positive relationship with support towards tourism
(0.315; p.<0); and a significant negative relationship is found between perceived positive
178 impacts and perceived negative impacts ( 0.251; p = 0.00), which could be suggesting that
those citizens that are more aware of the benefits of tourism may tend not to perceive the
negative ones, and the other way around.
These relationships are plotted in Figure 4 and discussed in the following, with the
support of the inputs from the qualitative interviews and from the literature review.

Discussion
Research based on statistics is often aimed at finding causality between variables that can
next lead to forecasts. However, this research is based on correlations, which is insufficient
to claim a causal relationship, and thus the results are presented with arrows going both
ways, as it can be seen in Figure 4. While causality implies that one variable causes the
other, correlations simply state that two variables are related somehow, but it does not
provide with an explanation why they are related or if there are causal relationships
between them (Bhattacherjee, 2012). Hence, discussions are based on the correlations found
and causal relationships are not derived from the results of the survey, yet interviews are
used to understand which possible explanations could be behind the relationships found.
Figure 4 summarises those statistically significant relationships found on the bivariate
analyses. Previous literature had found statistically significant relationships between
benefits and support towards tourism (Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004; Nunkoo and So, 2016;
Perdue et al., 1990) yet, no statistically significant relationships between costs and support
towards tourism (Gursoy et al., 2002; Nunkoo and So, 2016). In this study, however, both
relationships appear to be significant, which indicates that citizens of Girona might be more
concerned about the costs of tourism than other communities. During the qualitative
interviews, when interviewees were asked about the costs of tourism, they tended to
compare the situation in Girona with those experienced in close tourism destinations, such
as Costa Brava or Barcelona. This suggested that the closeness of Girona to very touristic
destinations could raise the awareness of tourism costs. This indicates that there could be a
third factor, the perceived costs of tourism in close tourism destinations (where most citizens

Figure 4.
Statistically
significant
correlations between
variables
usually go or have lived, for example), affecting this relationship. Hence, for example, it Tourism in the
could be that perceived costs in close tourism destinations was an intermediate variable city of Girona
between costs perceived in the residents’ destinations and support towards tourism, which
could explain why the relationship is statistically significant in this study.

Benefits of friendship
Apart from the influence that perceived costs and perceived benefits have on support
towards tourism, this thesis also analyses the influence that personal benefits derived from
179
tourism, involvement in the industry, and attachment to communities could have on these
perceptions. The resulting relationships between personal benefits and perceived impacts
from tourism seem to align with existing literature (Andereck et al., 2005; Perdue et al., 1990),
as it positively correlated with positive impacts and negatively correlated with negative
impacts. Moreover, personal benefits directly correlated with support towards tourism,
which was also found in previous studies (Nunkoo and So, 2016; Perdue et al., 1990). These
results support literature on the importance that deriving personal benefits from tourism
has on being supportive towards it, however it tries to go beyond economic benefits as it
also aims at including those personal benefits that are more social or cultural.
While existing literature usually focus on economic personal benefits (Andereck et al.,
2005; Jurowski et al., 1997), this research shows that the degree to which residents learn from
other cultures thanks to tourism or their level of friendship with tourists could be used to
measure those non-economic personal benefits. During the interviews, some interviewees
expressed their lack of interaction with tourists, which suggests that there could be space for
increasing personal benefits that citizens derive from tourism through boosting interactions
between tourists and residents.
Friendship (with residents) is an item that has been used to measure different variables,
such as attachment to communities (Gursoy et al., 2002; Hummon, 1992) or quality of life
(Andereck and Nyaupane, 2011). In fact, friendship can be defined as “one attached to
another by affection or esteem” (Merriam-Webster, 2018b), but it also means “one that is not
hostile” (Merriam-Webster, 2018a). Considering one of the main aims for researchers to
study attitudes towards tourism is to avoid “hostile” behaviours, it seems that the role of
friendship could be further researched as an element of personal benefits derived from
tourism. Other authors have also stressed the importance of friendship with non-residents,
as for example Lindberg and Johnson (1997), who considered it a core value. However, it is
not generally included as a personal benefit in studies within SET frameworks, which could
contribute to expanding the concept of personal benefits towards including more emotional
values.

Importance of knowledge
As already explained, the variable on involvement in the tourism industry was not valid,
and it resulted to be measuring mainly knowledge about tourism and participation in the
decision-making process. If one focuses on knowledge, the findings obtained suggest that
residents perceive similar levels of benefits from tourism regardless the knowledge they
have about the industry, and that those more knowledgeable perceive higher levels of
negative impacts than the rest. These findings are aligned with Nunkoo and So (2016), but
they seem to contradict other authors such as Andereck et al. (2005) or Davis et al. (1988).
This is not surprising considering that these studies use different scales to measure
knowledge and that the scale used in this research is adapted from Nunkoo and So (2016).
Yet, based on these results, a clear relationship exists between knowledge about tourism and
perceived costs. During the qualitative interviews, those who had weaker opinions, or non-
JTA opinions at all, specially relating to the negative impacts, were those who considered that
27,2 they did not know much about tourism. Thus, a possible explanation for this relationship
could be that those less knowledgeable residents are aware about the benefits of tourism but
not very informed about its negative impacts.
On the other hand, the fact that being participative in the decision-making process was
positively related with perceived negative impacts and not significatively related with
180 perceived positive impacts contradicts previous research on this topic (Andereck et al., 2005;
Lankford and Howard, 1994; Nunkoo and So, 2016). Based on the qualitative interviews it
could be argued that those who do not perceive negative impacts, do not feel the need to
participate. On the other hand, those more participative interviewees complained that their
opinions were not being listened to. These complaints could be indicating the possibility of a
third factor influencing respondents’ attitudes. For example, trust with the government
could be influencing the relationship between being participative and negative impacts
about tourism, yet research should be done to assess these relationships.
Considering that correlations do not imply causality, the fact that knowledge and
participation in the decision-making process are positively related with costs could be
implying that those more critical about tourism are more knowledgeable and participative,
which could be considered as a good situation to lead towards a more sustainable tourism
development. In addition, the interviews point that there could be some space for improving
citizens’ trust towards their government, which could substantively add to this movement
towards social sustainability.

Those feelings of proudness

Existing literature on attachment to communities found positive relationships between
attachment and perceived positive impacts, and no significant relationship between
attachment and perceived negative impacts (Andereck et al., 2005; Gursoy et al., 2002;
Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004), which seems to be perfectly aligned with the findings of this
research, as the same relationships were found. Moreover, a direct relationship was found
between attachment to communities and support towards tourism, which is also found by
other authors (Gursoy and Rutherford, 2004). Attachment to communities could be
considered the least directly related to tourism variable analysed within this research
(compared to personal benefits from tourism and involvement in the tourism industry), and
yet these findings stress the importance that it has on support towards tourism.
Some authors suggest that those more attached citizens tend to be more supportive
because they want to see their communities progress and they see how tourism can play a
key role for this growth (Andereck et al., 2005). During the qualitative interviews, not only
this tendency could be perceived, but it was also felt that those attached residents tended to
express higher levels of proudness of receiving tourism in Girona. Except for one
interviewee, those who expressed that they would feel sad if they had to move out voiced
how tourism increased their proudness of Girona, as they felt that the city was being more
recognized and valued thanks to tourism. Therefore, the direct relationship between
attachment to communities and support towards tourism could go beyond willing the city to
prosper and refer as well to feelings and emotions such as the proudness generated by
tourists willing to visit Girona. Considering that several authors have analysed both
proudness of being from a place or destination as a measure for attachment (Hummon, 1992;
Williams and Lawson, 2001), and increased proudness of a place thanks to tourism as a
measure of support (Nunkoo and So, 2016; Tovar and Lockwood, 2008), it seems that
literature supports the key role that proudness has for those attached citizens to support
tourism.
Conclusions and reflections Tourism in the
To conclude, few lines are aimed at reflecting on how this research has been developed as city of Girona
well as how it could be useful for management decisions and how it contributes to existing
knowledge on attitudes towards tourism. In this line, even though this research aims at
being objective, the subjectivity of the researcher could have biased the results, especially
considering that the answers as to why the resulting relationships arose were (partially)
based on the qualitative interviews. Moreover, more sophisticated statistics could have been
run with the data collected, and further results could have been obtained. Yet, as already
181
mentioned, the limited knowledge on statistics of the researcher set the boundaries of the
statistical analyses. Considering the external validity of the data and the fact that reality
cannot be perfectly known, it is not assured that the results represents the whole population
of Girona; as well as the discussion does not try to extrapolate any of the results to other
urban destinations because they are time and context bounded (data was collected in Girona
in May 2018).
The aim of this research was to describe the attitudes of the residents of Girona towards
tourism and to develop a deeper understanding on elements related to tourism that may be
more likely to influence these attitudes. Hence, the research question was the following:

RQ1. How do residents of Girona perceive tourism? And what are the possible reasons
behind these perceptions?
One of the main purposes of this study was to move towards enhancing those emotional
components within a SET theoretical framework, which is in line with other authors
(Williams and Lawson, 2001; Boley et al., 2014; Woosnam and Norman, 2009) that tried to
focus on less rational elements. Therefore, and even if this is a correlational research,
qualitative interviews were essential to understanding which emotional elements might be
key to explaining some of the relationships found.
Results suggest that, overall, residents of Girona do support tourism development and
that they perceive its benefits. Yet, it is also found that they might be more critical about the
negative impacts of tourism than other communities, especially those more knowledgeable
and participative citizens. On the other hand, those who personally benefit from tourism and
those more attached to their communities appeared to be very supportive towards tourism.
Relating to the managerial implications, it seems that citizens are missing more quality
contact with tourists which highlights that promoting more spaces of interaction between
residents and tourists could be beneficial. On the other hand, the authenticity of Girona
should never be neglected, but rather advocated, since it could contribute to increase those
feelings of proudness that make citizens be more willing to host tourists.
This research also adds to the current understanding of attitudes towards tourists within
SET framework, especially relating to covering those more emotional elements, as it is
suggested that friendship with tourists could be a good measurement for personal benefits;
that proudness could be a possible explanation for the positive relationship between
attachment and support; and that costs in close popular tourism destinations could intensify
the relationship between perceived costs of tourism and the support towards it. Moreover,
this study contributes in generating knowledge about those small urban destinations that
seem to be neglected by existing literature.

Note
1. Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) is the Spanish National Institute of Statistics.
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Corresponding author
Sira Vidal Rua can be contacted at: [email protected]

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