Rural Residents' Attitudes Toward Recreation and Tourism Development

This study investigates residents' attitudes toward recreation and tourism development in 10 rural Colorado towns. Two-per capita ratios based on tourism retail sales and total retail sales were developed and the communities were grouped into high and low tourism and high and low economic categories. These two ratios as grouping variables and length of residence as a covariate formed the basis for 2 x 2 ANCOVA conducted to determine any significant differences for eight recreation attitudes and 18 tourism development attitude statements. Generally, it was found that residents' attitudes towards tourism development in communities with both high economic and tourism development and low economic and tourism development were more positive than those residents of the low/high or high/low economic and tourism development communities. Further, recreation attitudes were affected by level of economic activity but not level of tourism development. Additionally, length of residence was found to have no significant effect on the residents' attitudes towards tourism development.