Residents’ Perceived Marine Tourism Impacts and Support Development Attitude - Case Study of Jibei Island

Abstract

This study analyzes a small island residents’ impact on development of marine tourism perception and support attitude to new island tourism development and investigates tourism dependence on residents’ impact perception and attitude toward support its moderating effect. This study took residents living on Jibei Island in Taiwan’s Penghu Islands archipelago as the subjects, using the convenience sampling method of questionnaires, and collected a total of 279 valid questionnaires. After statistical analysis, this study has the following findings. Residents perceived that tourism development has brought about the impact of traffic congestion, marine pollution, coastal landscape damage, destruction of coral reefs, but increased employment opportunities. And in the factors of “negative impact to living conditions”, “negative impact to marine environment”, “improved infrastructure”, and “positive economic impact” significantly influence residents support attitude towards tourism development. The residents of depend on the tourism, will affect their perception on the impact of marine tourism and tourism development support attitude.  The results of this study not only provide reference to island countries in the development of marine tourism, but also offer specific directions and recommendations for future research.