Recently, academic research has been devoted to the perceptions and attitudes of residents toward cruise tourism development. However, most of them focus on tourism destinations located in the arctic/polar area and do not... [ view full abstract ]
Recently, academic research has been devoted to the perceptions and attitudes of residents toward cruise tourism development. However, most of them focus on tourism destinations located in the arctic/polar area and do not offer any cluster analysis. Moreover, still poor research does exist in the Mediterranean Area.
This study aims to analyse the different residents’ perceptions toward the impact of cruise tourism and to profile them based on their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. For this study, a questionnaire tested in prior research was adopted (Brida, Del Chiappa, Meleddu & Pulina, 2012). Data were collected in the city of Cagliari in 2014 through a stratified random sample of 1039 people, calculated as a percentage of the resident population, on the basis of age group, gender and district of residence. A tandem analysis approach (Principal Component Analysis; hierarchical and non-hierarchical cluster analysis) was performed on the impact statements in an effort to identify groups of residents with similar response patterns.
Findings show that residents have, overall, a slightly positive perception towards cruise tourism development. Furthermore, the cluster analysis, conducted on the first six principal components extracted by applying a Principal Component Analysis, allowed us to identify five different segments in term of their perceptions toward the impact of cruise tourism development and their attitude to support a further development of it. Specifically, segments were labeled as follows: “Indifferent”, “Lovers”, “Cultural-Lovers”, “Critics” and “Cautious”. The research findings also suggest that some socio-demographic variables influence the residents’ perceptions and attitude (gender, age, level of education, employment reliance, the distance from the tourist areas and previous contact experiences with cruise tourists, etc.). In an attempt to effectively increase resident’s support for specific projects, findings suggest that policy makers and destination marketers should run internal marketing operations tailored according to the different segment of residents to be considered. However, the main limitation of this study is related to context chosen and this means that findings cannot be generalized.
