Evaluating Residents’ Attitudes Toward Tourism Development and Regional Collaboration within the Monongahela National Forest Region

Abstract

This paper comparatively examines residents’ attitudes toward the tourism economy across eight rural counties at varying tourism development stages within the Monongahela National Forest region, West Virginia. Nine hypotheses related to attitudes toward sustainable tourism, perceptions of regional collaboration, and perceived strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) are proposed and evaluated with the Social Exchange Theory (SET), Tourism Area Life Cycle model (TALC), and Doxey’s Irritation Index as the theoretical foundations. While the nine hypotheses are not consistently supported with mixed findings, it seems that residents from counties at higher levels of development stages are more likely to support tourism development because of its positive economic benefits to communities while disfavoring tourism development for its negative social impacts on communities; to value the importance and benefits of regional collaboration, and to score higher on their communities’ strengths in tourism development. Research implications, limitations, and future research needs are discussed.