The Factors of Residents' Support for Sustainable Tourism Development

Abstract

In this paper we examined the factors of residents’ support for sustainable tourism development in Mardin city-Turkey, in the context of gender as social structure. We found that people are sensitive about positive and negative effects of tourism, in association with society attachment and involvement, with bigger role for the later. And the perceptions of positive effects reduce their evaluation of the negative effects. Also we found that women are less active in transforming their attitude toward the effects of tourism to behavior toward sustainable tourism. But they are ready, more than men, to support sustainable tourism and ignore its negative effects, in spite of their higher sensitivity for the negative effects. So we recommend raising the role of local community and giving women more chances in the different levels of tourism activities.