Roles of place identity distinctiveness and continuity on resident attitude toward tourism

IntroductionWith people's increasing critics on tourism shifting from economic contributions to a locale to preservation of natural environment or local culture, today's tourism planners have to pay more attention than ever to local residents' attitudes toward tourism development. It is believed that, on one hand, local residents' welcome attitude is indispensable to visitors' satisfaction with the destination or their travel experience; on the other hand, only the type of tourism accruing the local's subjective wellbeing will be well accepted by the local people. It is from this perspective that tourism planners must pay special attention to resident's place-based perceptions and their expectations. This reasoning thought is attributed to the fact that tourism is essentially a place-based phenomenon, involving the production of place identity at different scales (Hall 1998). Given its increasing importance, tourism businesses are actively engaged in presenting and promoting place identity, in order to attract tourists and increase market share (Dredge & Jenkins, 2003).Tourism literature stresses the important role of place identity in assessing resident attitude toward tourism development (e.g. Gu & Ryan, 2008; Palme, Koenig-Lewis & Jones 2013; Wang & Xu, 2015). In a study of Beijing's cultural Hutong in China, Gu and Ryan (2008) observed that residents' understanding of a place had more of an impact than the issue of economic gain, and recommended that tourism research should seek to clarify the role of place identity in understanding resident attitudes toward tourism. In the context of place-behaviour studies, Palme, Koenig-Lewis, and Jones (2013) applied the social identity theory to resident's support for tourism, which investigated the relationship between residents' place-based social identity and their tourism involvement and advocacy based on the population comprising the young Welsh adults. Following Palme et al.'s conceptual model, Wang, Zhou, Lee, & King (2014) investigated the residents of Indiana, USA, which shows that residents' place-based cognitive and affective social identity components have a significant effect on resident attitude toward tourism.The study of place identity and its application in tourism is complex, whereas the social identity theory is limited by the dominance of 'self-esteem' as the only principle of identity. A more comprehensive study on the application of place identity in tourism should reflect place identity's other important components as well. According to Breakwell (1986), there are four fundamental place-identity components, which should all be considered when explaining place identity and its influence, i.e. place-based distinctiveness, continuity, self-esteem and self-efficacy.Based on Breakwell's identity process theory, Wang and Xu (2015) developed a conceptual model incorporating the four place identity components, positing direct relationships between the place identity components and resident attitude toward tourism. Their study indicates that there exist direct relationships between place-based self-esteem, self-efficacy, and resident attitude toward tourism. The effects of place-based distinctiveness and continuity, however, were not detected in Wang and Xu's (2015) study. Tourism literature stresses that place identity influences resident attitude toward tourism through distinctiveness, continuity, self-esteem and self-efficacy (Gu and Ryan, 2008), yet empirical evidence is still lacking, to prove whether and how place identity distinctiveness and continuity exert their effects on resident attitude toward tourism. This study is designed to fill this gap by examining the relationships between place identity distinctiveness, continuity, and resident attitude toward tourism, and empirically testing the posited relationships.Conceptual BackgroundIn place-behaviour studies, Proshansky's (1978) place-identity theory is deemed to be a pioneer in explaining the relationship between place and identity. …