PERCEPTION AND ATTITUDES OF RESIDENTS TOWARDS IMPACTS OF TOURISM: A RESEARCH ON ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE REGION

Tourism has a social, cultural, economic and environmental impact on destinations. The positive or negative perception of these effects by residents has great importance for the continuation of tourism activities in one region. The aim of this study is to determine the perception and attitude of local people towards tourism and tourism support who have a great interest in nature-based tourism and who demonstrate a great reaction to the projects they believe will harm the nature such as hydroelectric power plants projects, Cerattepe Project and Green Road Project. A total of 449 data from residents living in Arhavi, Borcka, Artvin (Center) and Hopa districts were analyzed in the survey. In the course of testing hypotheses, variables such as age group, marital status, education status, working status, survival time in Artvin and county living in Artvin was evaluated by the Kruskal-Wallis H Test; the gender factor was evaluated by the Mann Whitney test and the correlation analysis was made to determine tourism support. As a result of these analyzes, significant differences were found between demographic factors and the perception of tourism effects and tourism support. In addition, it has been determined that the people living in Artvin find favorable the economic, social, cultural and environmental effects of tourism and they support tourism.