Resident Perceptions of the Economic Benefits of Tourism: Toward a Common Measure

Abstract

At the core of the resident attitude literature is the general understanding that the more residents economically benefit from tourism, the more they support tourism. While a central tenet, previous research has measured resident perceptions of economically benefiting from tourism somewhat haphazardly, using four disparate directions without a common cross-culturally reliable and valid scale. To bring clarity to the literature, this study develops and presents the Economic Benefit from Tourism Scale as a reliable and valid measure for the resident attitude literature to embrace. The scale’s development follows Churchill’s recommendations and uses three separate data collections across the United States of America and Poland to purify the scale and demonstrate its validity within an international context. Both samples prove the scale to be construct valid with maximum weight alphas in the .85 to .90 range, standard factor loadings all above 0.60, and average variance extracted estimates between 57% and 69%.