An investigation of sustainable tourism development in mass tourism destinations from the perspective of social representation theory: The case of Antalya

Moscovici, who considers social psychology as a fundamental field of science, pointed to social representations as a way of understanding and making sense of the world. In this context, it is aimed to explore the social representations of the sustainable tourism development of Antalya, which is a mass tourism destination, in terms of hotel operators (hotel owners). In line with the purpose of the research, the qualitative research method was preferred. As a data collection technique, free association method, which is seen as an important technique, was preferred in order to discover the constituent elements of the representation content. Snowball sampling method was preferred and 15 hotel operators (hotel owner) were interviewed between 15/08/2021 and 30/12/2021. The obtained data were transferred to a qualitative data analysis software and coded. The categories created by bringing the codes together according to their similarities and/or differences were examined by content analysis. Five basic categories emerged; environmental, economic, cultural, social and administrative. It has been discovered that these categories are similar to the sustainable tourism indicators in the literature. In addition, it has been seen that the representations of the hotel operators on the sustainable tourism development of Antalya are mostly on environmental issues. When the associations within the categories are examined, it is seen that the most repeated representations are recreational activities, employment and city planning. When the answers given to the question asked to discover the image in the minds of hotel operators were coded, five basic categories were reached; nature image, human resources image, urban image, touristic image and administrative image. Natural resources have taken their place among the most repeated and therefore the most common representations. With word cloud analysis, the most repeated representations were illustrated as recreational activities (Generation Y), natural resources (Generation X), urban planning (Baby Boomer). Finally, with the multiple correspondence analysis, the closeness of the participants to the social representations of their generation and education level was determined. In the light of all these findings, theoretical and practical contributions were made to the related literature and suggestions were made for future research within the framework of research limitations.