The effect of local people's tourism perception on tourism support: The case of Midyat

Various effects, including socio-cultural, economic, and environmental effects, are observed in places where tourism activities occur. Knowing how the local people perceive these effects; is of great importance for the country's future and regional tourism. With the development of the tourism sector in a region, both positive and negative socio-cultural, economic, and environmental effects may occur. Local people feel these effects the most. For this reason, measuring the attitudes and behaviors of local people towards tourism activities has become an important research topic. Midyat district, which has important tourist attractions in terms of history, culture, and faith tourism, is seen as an important tourist destination in national and international tourism movements. In this study, a survey method was carried out to determine the local people's perceptions in Midyat district towards tourism development and the economic, socio-cultural, and environmental effects of tourism. Questionnaire forms were filled with face-to-face interview techniques. 450 questionnaires were prepared to be used during the research, and these questionnaires were applied. It was determined that 47 of the distributed questionnaires were not filled by the participants. As a result, 403 questionnaires were evaluated and entered into the SPSS program. As a result of the multivariate sling analysis performed later, it was determined that the values of 39 data were more than the accepted criterion p<.001 Mahalanobis distance and these data were removed from the data set. After removing the extreme values, the analyzes of the study were made on 364 pieces of data. To test the research hypotheses, multiple regression analysis was conducted between the support of the local people for tourism development and the socio-cultural positive, socio-cultural negative, economic positive, economic negative, environmentally positive, and environmental negative effects of tourism. In addition, differences analyses were carried out to determine the differences between the level of support of the local people for tourism development and their demographic characteristics. As a result of the data analysis obtained, it has been seen that the perceptions of the local people's perceptions towards the socio-cultural, economic, and environmental effects of tourism are generally positive, and they support the activities for tourism development. In addition, it has been determined that there is a significant relationship between the support given by the local people to tourism development and their perceptions of the economic positive and environmental positive effects of tourism. Still, there is no significant relationship between the perceptions of tourism's socio-cultural positive, socio-cultural negative, economic negative, and environmental negative effects. Independent Sample t-Test was used for gender, marital status, and occupation variables. One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted for variables such as age, education level, monthly income, and residence time. As a result of the difference analysis, significant differences were found between the demographic characteristics of the local people living in Midyat and their tourism perceptions. In general, it has been determined that the local people residing in Midyat have a positive perspective against the socio-cultural, economic, and environmental effects caused by tourism and support the development of tourism in the region.