Agritourism, Community Attachment, and Their Contributions to Tourism and Community: An Empirical Study

Abstract

The tourism industry has encountered various sustainable development functionalities, and nations seek to develop tourism while conserving nature and its resources. Agritourism strengthens a region’s competitive, cultural, and transformational resources while helping the rural community, economy, and society thrive sustainably. However, few studies have evaluated community attention toward agritourism in developing countries. This study bridges this gap using community attachment through agritourism-based resident perceptions of the economic, social, cultural, and environmental impacts of tourism support and its contributions to resident communities. A partial least squares method under structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed using SmartPLS 3.0. Results reveal that community attachment is significantly correlated with economic, social, cultural, and environmental impacts, which are also significantly associated with tourism support. These impacts were mainly related to contributions to the community, thus confirming all hypotheses except for the cultural implications, which were found to be insignificant. This study will help marketers, professionals, and decisionmakers understand and predict the economic, social, cultural, and environmental impacts of agritourism and formulate policies to contribute to its development.