Laguna como destino turístico: o pensar dos residentes

Abstract

The analyses, studies and research carried out in the last decades have emphasized that Tourism and trips have had negative and positive effects on the populations of tourism destination. Search on specialized literature unveiled the existence of impacts related to tourism development, interaction between tourist-resident and other related influences. Bearing in mind that the residents of tourism destinations are not usually consulted when tourism starts to develop in their municipality, this study aimed at finding out the attitudes of residents about the tourism impacts in three neighborhoods in Laguna, SC Mar Grosso, Magalhães and Downtown. The social psychology and the use of a tool proposed by Molero and Cuadrado (2006) permitted to collect the data for the analysis of the local residents´ attitudes about the Tourism impact in this municipality. The results showed that the positive Tourism impacts are related to new job opportunities, new infrastructure and the consequent incoming money from tourists´ expenses. Among the young residents, the ones who work and the ones who depend on tourism economically, the impacts on their daily life and the importance of Tourism perceived by them showed their positive attitude. The older residents, the ones who do not work and do not depend on the activity economically, showed the most negative attitudes and some dissatisfaction related to the tourist activity and the negative impacts approached by the tool which was applied. Ultimately, the global attitude was positive (+1, 45), balancing the positive and negative effects brought by the development of Tourism in the municipality of Laguna/SC.