Broadening the Environment: a Social Impacts Study of Tourism in Esfahan

The cultural heritage is accepted as forming an element in the environment and, as such, it is important to evaluate the effects of various activities, including tourism, on it. The purpose of this paper is to examine and identify the general trend of attitudes among residents of an historic city and World Heritage Site towards tourism development. A fundamental assumption underling this paper is that "environmental" impacts should be regarded not only as those affecting ecosystem function, for example, or even the aesthetic values of a land-or city- scape but also the social fabric of the locality. As such, this paper provides the first social impact research on such an historic city in Iran by measuring the host community's attitudes towards tourism development. The primary goal here is to establish a theoretical and empirical study for the city of Esfahan, enabling future comparative analyses of host attitudes. A sample was chosen from among local residents and regression analysis was applied in order to discover if there are any underlying dimensions concerning their attitudes towards tourism development, and whether socio-economic and demographic characteristics can be useful predictors of these attitudes.