Determinants of residents’ preferences in local elections in a tourism destination

Abstract

Residents represent one of the main stakeholders in a tourism destination.They have the power to influence the planning and development oftourism destinations in many ways. They can contribute to destinationdevelopment directly, via local initiatives and communities, or indirectlyin local government elections. This paper focuses on the indirectmethod of influencing tourism development. It deals with therelationship among residents’perception of tourism impact, economic,and socio-demographic profile, and their political preferences in localelections. This paper proposes an integrative model and uses the Generalized Linear Model (GLM) for testing this relationship in Český Krumlov, Czechia. The results confirm the relationships between theperception of tourism benefits and costs and residents’ political preferences in local elections. The main factors affecting residents’ voting decisions were identified as increasing quality of life, additional tax revenue, rising value of residents’ real estate, and over crowding and disruption of everyday life.