Coastal areas use in Kuşadasi and attitudes of local people about the environmental effects of tourism

Tourism activities cause many environmental effects in tourism development area. Especially coastal areas face environmental problems when coastal zone?s usage capacity is exceeded. This pressure causes many environmental and ecological degeneration. This degeneration increasingly continues and creates negative effects at the regions which do not have planned tourism activities. In this era, the problems which arised from tourism have increased rapidly. Local people have a negative attitude against tourism because their point of view towards tourism has changed. The purpose of this thesis is determin environmental effects of tourism particularly over the land usage. In this point, local people?s attitudes are important to determine the perceived environmental effects. For the case study part, a public survey about the environmental effects of the tourism industry related to local people?s attitudes was used as a data collection tool. This public survey was applied via face to face questionnaires with 125 people towards local people who live in Kuşadası city center (Aydın province). In addition, land usage changes have been observed in order to determine tourism activities? effects over the coastal area and its surroundings. Eventually, more suitable land usage has attempted to be determined by way of taking account of geographical characteristics of Kuşadası. It was found that tourism caused changes in the land use. Moreover, it was also detected that the local people have a negative attitude about the environmental effects of tourism in Kuşadası. Lastly, we proposed some suggestions for sustainable tourism practices and for a better suitable land use.KEY WORDSCoastal Land Use, Environmental Effects, Local People, Attitudes, Kuşadası