Residents’ Attitude towards the Impact of Tourism in Bandar Abbas

The tourism industry has become an important sector for both developed and developing countries, including Iran. This study attempts to identify the perceived impacts of tourism by residents in Bandar Abbas, located on the south of Iran. The impact of tourism was measured by the Ap and Crompton's model (1998) in which, four aspects are categorized for tourism impacts; economic, cultural, social and environmental.Based on a survey of 390 local residents, tourism impacts were assessed by a 33-item tourism impact scale. According to the mean measures, the most strong perceptions toward tourism effects are associated with economic (M=3.78), and the second one is cultural aspect (M=3.61). In fact, these two aspects are considered as positive effects of tourism. On the other hand, the mean score of negative impacts was higher on social (M=3.38) and environmental (M=3.33) aspects in terms of the perceived impacts of tourism. The study also revealed that men have more negative social perception and positive environmental perception compare to women. The findings also showed that there is no relationship between marital status, job status and monthly income with tourism perception.