Residents' attitudes of responsibility in regional sustainable tourism development

Purpose – To actualized the local residents’ attitudes research in Republic of Croatia since it is an important concept of the tourism development especially in destinations that are highly dependent on the tourism; to explore the fundamental relationship between the two main actual terms, responsibility and sustainable tourism development; to examine the degree of stakeholder’s responsibility from the local resident’s point of view; to research the relation between the degree of responsibility and the utilization of the tourism environment exploitation. Methodology – To achieve the main purpose of this research relevant inferential and multivariate techniques have been applied, namely, factor analysis and Kruskal-Wallis variance analysis test, on the basis of primary data collected on the attitudes of the participants on the responsibility for tourism development while preserving the environment and heritage. Findings – The findings indicate that there are two groups of stakeholders with the major responsibility for protection of tourism development factors: the ‘directly related’ and ‘indirectly related’ ones. Members of those two groups are basically those who exploit the tourism factors to the largest degree. Contribution – According to the scientific knowledge of the original empirical research the level of responsibility for sustainable tourism development especially in the regions where economic growth relies on tourism were specified. The most important scientific contribution of this paper is determination of two groups of stakeholders with the major responsibility for protection of tourism development factors.