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Article

Catalyst or Barrier? The Influence of Place Attachment on Perceived Community Resilience in Tourism Destinations

by
Yongrui Guo
1,*,
Jie Zhang
2,
Yuling Zhang
3,* and
Chunhui Zheng
4
1
School of History Culture and Tourism, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou 221116, China
2
Department of Land Resources and Tourism Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
3
Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangzhou 510070, China
4
School of Tourism, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2018, 10(7), 2347; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072347
Submission received: 7 June 2018 / Revised: 2 July 2018 / Accepted: 4 July 2018 / Published: 6 July 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Tourism in Sensitive Environments: Mountains, Islands, Coastal and Polar Regions)
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Abstract

:
The concept of resilience has recently received a substantial amount of attention in sustainable tourism research. Nevertheless, empirical studies on the factors that may influence the perceived resilience of community residents in tourism destinations remain lacking. A thorough analysis is needed to examine place attachment as a catalyst of or a barrier to community resilience in tourism destinations. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the influence of place attachment on perceived resilience based on data derived from 655 residents in two earthquake-affected tourism communities in Sichuan Province, China. The empirical results indicate that place identity and place dependence have a positive influence on the perceived resilience of community residents in tourism destinations. The equality test for the structural model demonstrates that the influence of place attachment on perceived community resilience is invariant across native residents and lifestyle tourism immigrants. Residents who develop strong place attachment to their communities exhibit greater resilience and adaptive capacity.

1. Introduction

Tourism has significant socio-economic benefits and has become a major source of income for residents in nature-based communities. Many of these communities have shifted from featuring traditional occupations to focusing on tourism, which has become an essential livelihood strategy for community residents [1,2]. However, the tourism industry is highly susceptible and vulnerable to disasters and crises. Natural disasters, economic recessions, political instability, and terrorist attacks seriously affect the tourism industry at the global and community levels. Such disasters and crises have increasingly become a major threat to tourism communities. Resilience and sustainable development of social economic systems have become important concepts to researchers and managers. Thus, there is an urgent need to understand not only what can promote the resilience of community residents in tourism destinations but also the capability of residents in nature-based tourism communities to adapt to and cope with change.
In recent years, resilience has emerged as a new development paradigm, bringing new insights on how communities adapt to changing environments and maintain sustainable development [3]. Resilience refers to the system’s ability to resist disturbances and maintain its basic functions [4,5,6], and it has become a hot research topic in recent years following the ecologist Holling’s seminal paper [6]. Community resilience and adaptive capacity have been studied within many disciplines, including ecology, disaster management, and community development [7,8,9]. However, the significance of resilience as a new strategy and path to the sustainable development of tourism communities has recently begun to attract the attention of tourism scholars [10,11,12,13,14]. Although quantitative empirical studies are gradually increasing in number, most tourism studies on resilience are conceptual, descriptive, and exploratory, or based on a few case studies [15,16]. Knowledge of influential factors affecting the perceived resilience of community residents in tourism destinations remains limited. Calgaro et al. claim that the lack of understanding of the factors of a destination’s resilience and vulnerability leads to an inability to effectively build community resilience [17]. This paper will analyze the role of place attachment in the perceived resilience of community residents in tourism destinations.
Limited research focuses specifically on the influential factors affecting the resilience of tourism destination communities [18]. However, a body of more general research on the influential factors of resilience in other types of communities has developed and offers a number of useful insights. Four categories of factors are considered likely to impact community resilience, including economic factors (e.g., wealth production capacity, access to credit, diversification of the local economy, and business size), institutional factors (e.g., leadership and governance processes), physical and geographical conditions (e.g., infrastructure and proximity to disaster-prone areas), and social factors (e.g., social capital, social networks, and place attachment) [19,20,21]. There is an urgent need for systematic research to analyze the influence of social factors on community resilience.
Among the social factors, the importance of place attachment for disaster recovery has been emphasized. More and more studies have begun to demonstrate the importance of place ties for a community’s disaster preparedness, response, and resilience [22,23,24]. Within the emerging literature, a limited amount of empirical research has examined the influence of community residents’ place attachment on perceived resilience in tourism destinations [25]. Place attachment is presented as an emotional and cognitive factor that influences how community residents respond to social and ecological change. However, the literature offers no consistent conclusion about the role of place attachment in community resilience. On one hand, strong place attachment may enhance community resilience [23,26], while on the other hand, it may serve as a barrier to community resilience in some circumstances [27]. Based on the existing conflicting conclusions, further analysis is needed to examine place attachment as a catalyst of or a barrier to community resilience in tourism destinations. According to the findings of a study on the recovery process in two nature-based tourism communities impacted by the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 in Sichuan Province, China, this paper empirically analyzes the influence of place attachment on perceived community resilience in the disaster recovery process.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Community Resilience

The resilience concept, which originates from ecology [6], has been used to describe a system’s ability to withstand and respond to crises and disasters. According to Walker et al., resilience refers to “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks” [28] (p. 5). An important innovative aspect of resilience theory is that ecosystems have multiple self-organization states and can adopt alternative stable states when resilience decreases [29]. Subsequently, resilience theory was extended from ecosystems to coupled social-ecological systems [30] and social systems [31]. In social resilience research, researchers must analyze not only the role of natural and physical factors but also the effect of politics, culture, economics, and the agency of human actors on promoting resilience [32]. As a representative social system, a community is an entity that has a defined geographical area, specific population group, and a shared fate, norms, values, and culture. A community is an exposure unit that may be vulnerable to a shock or a stressor. Studies of community resilience focus on understanding the important role of the social dimension of the community system in promoting the system’s adaptive capacity. Social factors of community resilience, such as social networks, trust, social capital, and place attachment, play a key role in a community system’s ability to cope with stress and change [30,33,34].
Many tourism communities undergo frequent crises and disasters, but by identifying measures that enable them to retain their core functions, they often have an inherent resilience that allows them cope with these stressors. Examining residents’ perceived resilience could help illuminate how tourism communities can effectively respond to increasing disturbances and change [35,36,37]. Although resilience is a widely studied concept in ecology and disaster management, it has become a focus of tourism research only recently [4,38,39,40]. According to Lew and Cheer, tourism resilience is “about understanding how to maintain tourism activities and a tourism community’s overall quality of life at desirable levels” [14] (p. 35). However, most tourism resilience studies have been conceptual and theoretical, and practical applications and empirical studies remain limited. Some valuable theoretical frameworks have been proposed to understand the adaptive capacity and resilience of tourism communities, such as the Sphere of Tourism Resilience model [41]; the Destination Sustainability Framework [10]; and the Scale, Change and Resilience model [3]. Currently, an empirical analysis of the factors that influence tourism community residents’ ability to be resilient remains lacking.
To analyze the factors influencing community resilience, we must consider how to measure and evaluate adaptive capacity and resilience at a community level. While the concept has become prevalent, operationalizing community resilience has been difficult. Many studies have been proposed to operationalize community resilience, but no common measure has been agreed upon. Several studies suggest that the core of community resilience research is understanding humans’ agency and response to change [17,42,43]. Several studies have measured community residents’ perceived resilience and ability to cope with change. Tsai et al. note that community resilience can be measured in four dimensions: disaster prevention awareness, community attachment, environment fragility, and adaptive responses [38]. Additionally, Biggs and colleagues develop a perceived resilience scale to measure tourism community enterprises’ adaptive capacity and resilience [1,44], while Holladay and Powell examine community residents’ perceived resilience from the economic, social, ecological, and institutional dimensions in the Commonwealth of Dominica [45]. Marshall and Marshall argue that community adaptive capacity and resilience can be evaluated in four perceptual dimensions: the ability to perceive risk and change; the ability to reorganize, learn and plan; the ability to cope with risk and change; and the degree of interest in change [46]. In this study, we use this four-dimensional framework to measure community resilience in tourism destinations.

2.2. Place Attachment

In environmental psychology and human geography, place is defined as a meaningful location and a center of human existence [24,47]. Place can offer people stability and a sense of meaning [48]. An emotional connection with a place is the basis for understanding transactions between people and their environment [22] because people are motivated to act based on psychological ties [49]. Place attachment is a prevailing concept that describes the affective bond between people and their physical community or place.
Place attachment, defined as people’s positive emotional bond to a place [50], is a key concept in human geography and environmental psychology. The majority of researchers assume that place attachment has two distinct dimensions: social and physical [24]. The social dimension of attachment refers to people having close ties to other community members, strong religious attachment, or a generational rootedness in place. The physical dimension of attachment refers to people feeling attached to the natural aspects of a place. Other studies suggest that place attachment has two subdomains: place dependence and identity. Place dependence describes an instrumental connection between people and place [51]. This function-driven relationship with place stems from the idea that a particular place can best help people achieve their goals and meet their needs. Place identity describes an individual’s identity, beliefs, thoughts, or cognitions about a specific place [52], and it is a cognitive process in which people feel a sense of belonging to a meaningful place [53]. Place dependence and identity distinguish instrumental and affective bonds with a place, thus it is a commonly used classification in the study of place attachment [24]. In this study, the construct of place attachment consists of place identity and dependence.
The importance of place attachment for resilience and adaptive capacity has been invoked in community resilience studies [23,26]. Previous studies have highlighted that place attachment is a key factor of community resilience [54]. Leykin et al. believe that place attachment is a key construct in measuring community resilience [55]. Maclean et al. note that the people–place connection is one of six attributes of community resilience [56]. In the resilience framework of Bec et al., place attachment is a source of resilience for a tourism community when undergoing long-term structural change [4]. Place attachment can contribute to tourism community cohesion and social capital, provide a sense of stability, and lead to a positive awareness of disaster consequences [57].
Several studies have assessed the impact of place attachment on community resilience, but their conclusions are equivocal. Some studies have indicated that strong place attachment has a positive influence on community resilience. When a place embodies certain meanings and attachment, people will strive to preserve it. People’s emotional connection to a place will enhance their participation in collective actions to protect, preserve, or improve their community [58]. However, other studies suggest that place attachment is a barrier to community resilience and adaptive capacity. One particular study reported a negative correlation between peanut farmers’ place attachment and transformational capacity [59]. Place attachment can also prevent people in high-risk communities from evacuating in the case of a natural disaster [22]. The objective of this study is to empirically analyze the role of place attachment in tourism community residents’ perceived resilience. Additionally, this study aims to further distinguish and reveal the roles of place dependence and identity in community resilience. Based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses will be tested:
Hypothesis 1 (H1).
Place identity has a positive effect on tourism community residents’ perceived resilience.
Hypothesis 1 (H1a).
Place identity has a positive effect on community residents’ ability to perceive risk and change (abbr. CR1).
Hypothesis 1 (Hb).
Place identity has a positive effect on community residents’ ability to reorganize, learn and plan (abbr. CR2).
Hypothesis 1 (H1c).
Place identity has a positive effect on community residents’ ability to cope with risk and change (abbr. CR3).
Hypothesis 1 (H1d).
Place identity has a positive effect on community residents’ interest in change (abbr. CR4).
Hypothesis 2 (H2).
Place dependence has a positive effect on tourism community residents’ perceived resilience.
Hypothesis 2 (H2a).
Place dependence has a positive effect on community residents’ ability to perceive risk and change (CR1).
Hypothesis 2 (H2b).
Place dependence has a positive effect on community residents’ ability to reorganize, learn and plan (CR2).
Hypothesis 2 (H2c).
Place dependence has a positive effect on community residents’ ability to cope with risk and change (CR3).
Hypothesis 2 (H2d).
Place dependence has a positive effect on community residents’ interest in change (CR4).
Place identity and place dependence express people’s psychological connection to a place. However, the relationship between place attachment, place dependence, and place identity remains inconclusive [60]. Jorgensen and Stedman find correlations among these three emotional dimensions [61], while Vong not only finds an effect of residents’ place identity on their place attachment but also concludes that the opposite may hold in other cases [62]. Therefore, this study assumes that place dependence and place identity are closely related. Based on the above discussion, the following hypothesis will be tested:
Hypothesis 3 (H3).
Place dependence and place identity are correlated.
Compared with other types of communities, tourism communities are characterized by the existence of a large number of lifestyle tourism immigrants whose main purpose is to live the more satisfying lifestyle offered by a tourism destination [63]. Native residents are attached to their community because it provides them with an identity (place identity) and livelihood (place dependence), whereas lifestyle tourism immigrants may be attached to the community due to its symbolic or aesthetic appeal. Factors influencing community resilience may differ in different social and economic settings [64]. Masterson et al. note that future studies should examine the differences in place attachment and responses to community change between native residents and newcomers [23]. This paper will test whether the defined conceptual model holds both for native residents and lifestyle tourism immigrants. Thus, the following hypotheses will be tested:
Hypothesis 4 (H4).
The proposed conceptual model is equivalent across native residents and lifestyle tourism immigrants.
Our proposed conceptual model containing all the hypotheses is presented in Figure 1.

3. Research Methodology

3.1. Survey Instrument

The measurement of perceived community resilience has been discussed in the literature [35,44,45,46,65]. Despite some inconsistent definitions of community resilience, there is general agreement about the three ideas at the foundation of community resilience: (1) the amount of stress that the system can bear while still maintaining the same structure and function, (2) the self-organization level of the system, and (3) the level of the system that enhances adaptive capacity by learning [6,46]. Based on these fundamental aspects, Marshall and Marshall develop and validate a scale to measure perceived community resilience [46], and it has been implemented in recent studies [66,67,68]. In this study, perceived community resilience in tourism destinations was examined using twelve items adapted from Reference [46], and place attachment was examined based on the scale from Reference [69]. Survey items were slightly revised according to China’s situation. All the constructs measured in this study were assessed with a multi-item, five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) (Table 1).

3.2. Study Site

Jiuzhai Valley National Park and Dujiangyan Scenic Areas, which are located in Sichuan Province, China, were selected as the study sites. Jiuzhai Valley National Park and Dujiangyan were listed as world heritage sites by UNESCO in 1992 and 2000, respectively. The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake—one of the most destructive earthquakes in the world—severely damaged tourism in the Sichuan Province, China. Because tourism is the primary source of income for the Jiuzhai Valley National Park and Dujiangyan tourism communities, the earthquake posed a serious threat to the livelihood of these communities’ residents. In 2008, tourist arrivals decreased by 44.8% in Dujiangyan and by 74.5% in Jiuzhai Valley National Park, and tourism receipts decreased by 46.1% and 74.6% in these areas, respectively. Therefore, the Jiuzhai Valley National Park and Dujiangyan tourism communities are ideal study sites to examine community resilience in tourism destinations.

3.3. Data Collection and Sample

Eight postgraduate students from Nanjing University were selected as investigators and were trained before conducting the field investigations. Steps were taken to improve the participants’ responses, including telling respondents that the questionnaire was anonymous and offering incentives to respondents. The survey was conducted in the morning, when tourism enterprises have fewer guests and respondents had more time to complete the questionnaire. The survey was completed using a convenience sampling method. Respondents were community residents who were engaged in tourism and who were aged 24 and above. They were the owners or employees of the tourism enterprises. They had experienced or were affected by the Wenchuan earthquake. The data were collected from 8 May to 21 May, 2014. Of the 710 distributed survey questionnaires, 655 were returned and utilized in the analysis.
The sample included a majority of females (57.3%), and most (91.5%) were aged between 24 and 49 years. Almost 52% possessed an undergraduate or technical college education. A total of 57.1% of the participants were native residents. Restaurants (44.9%) were the most prevalent type of tourism business, followed by souvenir shops (32.2%). Additionally, most tourism enterprises (82%) were small enterprises (≤5 employees), and 54% reported an annual income of less than 50,000 RMB.

4. Results

4.1. Measurement Model

Before a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was conducted, the data were screened to check for outliers, missing data, and normality. No outliers or missing data were found. To test the multidimensional normality of the data, Kline recommends that the skewness and kurtosis indices should not exceed 3 and 10, respectively [70]. All the skewness and kurtosis statistics were within acceptable ranges, indicating that the data distribution was normal. Because the assumption of the multivariate normality of the data was confirmed, the maximum likelihood (ML) approach was applied in this study.
Validity and reliability were tested to assess the measurement quality of the instrument used in this study, and composite reliability (CR) values and Cronbach’s alpha were conducted to evaluate the reliability of the measurement items. The results of the reliability tests for each latent variable revealed that Cronbach’s alpha values ranged from 0.670 to 0.845, demonstrating that the latent variable was above the acceptable value of 0.60 and had good internal consistency [71]. CR values should be higher than 0.6 [72], and according to the confirmatory factor analysis results for the measurement model (Table 1), all the CR values were above 0.60. Hence, a clear two-factor structure is supported for place attachment, comprising place identity (4 items) and place dependence (3 items), and a four-factor structure is supported for perceived community resilience. A validity assessment of each variable depends on the average variance extracted (AVE) value. The AVE value of all latent variables ranged from 0.475 to 0.583. Two values are slightly lower than the acceptable value of 0.5. In addition, the factor loadings of each latent variable were above the cutoff value of 0.5 and were significant (p < 0.001). Anderson and Gerbing stated that if all factor loadings for the items under the same construct were more than 0.5 and t-values were statistically significant, the convergent validity of the constructs was supported [73]. As shown in Table 2, the correlations between every pair of constructs are lower than the square roots of the AVE. Therefore, discriminant validity is confirmed. These results demonstrate that the measurement model is reliable and valid.
The overall acceptability of the measurement model was determined by goodness-of-fit statistics. The values are as follows: x2 = 558.06, df = 143, p = 0.000, AGFI = 0.874, GFI = 0.905, RMSEA = 0.067, CFI = 0.902, and IFI = 0.903. In sum, the results suggest that the data fit the proposed model well.

4.2. Structural Model

The hypothesized causal relationships among latent variables were tested using SEM. Figure 2 and Table 3 report the results of the evaluation of all the relationships and the structural model estimation.
The hypothesized positive relationship between place identity and community residents’ ability to perceive risk and change (H1a) was supported (standardized estimate = 0.15, p < 0.05). H1b, which hypothesized a positive relationship between place identity and community residents’ ability to reorganize, learn and plan was also supported (standardized estimate = 0.29, p < 0.001). As predicted by H1c, place identity significantly impacted community residents’ ability to cope with risk and change (standardized estimate = 0.26, p < 0.001). In addition, place identity was found to significantly increase community residents’ interest in change, providing support for H1d. Hence, H1 is accepted. Place dependence demonstrated a positive and significant effect on the four dimensions of perceived community resilience (CR1–CR4) in tourism destinations with a standardized path coefficient of 0.37, 0.44, 0.44, and 0.38, respectively. Hence, H2 is supported. Additionally, place dependence and place identity are correlated (standardized estimate = 0.50, p < 0.001), providing support for H3.

4.3. Multigroup Model

Several studies note that the level of place attachment differs between native residents and newcomers. Thus, this study will examine whether the proposed conceptual model has consistencies across the two resident groups. We tested the extent of equivalence among the model constructs across community members’ living backgrounds. Using multigroup analysis with SEM to examine equivalence and invariance has become an important component of hypothesis tests [74]. Table 4 shows the results of on extent of measurement equivalence, and both the measurement and structural weights constraints fit the two resident groups acceptably. There is a similar model fit between the measurement weights constraint (∆x2 = 16.81, ∆df = 13) and the structural weights constraint (∆x2 = 20.40, ∆df = 8). The results reveal that according to the RMSEA, each model exhibits a good fit to the data, and the ∆CFI is very small. The results indicate that measurement and structural invariance exist. There are no substantive differences in the role of place attachment in perceived community resilience across native residents and lifestyle tourism immigrants. Therefore, H4 is accepted.

5. Discussion

5.1. Discussion

Although resilience has become a focal issue in the sustainable tourism literature and interest in place attachment has been increasing in tourism studies, fewer studies focus on the relationship between these two important constructs. This study aimed to fill this gap and explore the influence of place attachment on the perceived resilience of community residents in tourism destinations. Overall, the findings support the proposed conceptual model and indicate that place attachment has a positive influence on the perceived resilience of community residents in tourism destinations. Thus, place attachment serves as a catalyst for enhancing community residents’ ability to cope with crises and external stresses in tourism destinations.
The first set of hypotheses focuses on the effects of place identity on the dimensions of perceived community resilience (H1a, H1b, H1c, and H1d). All four of the hypotheses were supported. The positive support for these four hypotheses suggests that as residents’ personal identification with their community increases, their ability to cope with risk and change strengthens. The relationships between place identity and community residents’ ability to reorganize, learn and plan; their ability to cope with risk and change; and their interest in change appear to be especially strong (β = 0.29; β = 0.26; β = 0.29). In contrast, the relationship between place identity and community residents’ ability to perceive risk and change is relatively weak (β = 0.15). These results support the arguments by Gifford et al., who conclude that people who exhibit positive emotions toward their community are likely to underestimate their perceived risk [75]. A strong emotional connection and psychological identification with the community can encourage residents to acquire local knowledge and contribute to adaptive learning to maintain the community’s viability. Place identity also promotes the community’s social capital, fosters collective action, and enhances the ability to respond to natural disasters [22]. Community residents with a positive place identity are more willing to adapt to emerging industrial and environmental changes [59].
The second set of hypotheses proposed significant relationships between place dependence and dimensions of perceived community resilience in tourism destinations (H2a, H2b, H2c, and H2d). Place dependence enhances the perceived resilience of community residents in tourism destinations, and the relationships between place dependence and the ability to reorganize, learn and plan and the ability to cope with risk and change appear to be especially strong (β = 0.44; β = 0.44). This finding is consistent with those of previous studies that farmers’ learning and knowledge-seeking capacity and adaptive management capacity are associated with their commitment to the farm community [76]. Another study shows that tourism operators and commercial fishers with a high level of place attachment are more likely to plan for extreme weather events [77]. We find that place dependence resulted in a stronger influence on resilience than place identity. For residents, tourism destinations’ community is a major source of their livelihood. Compared to the affective bonds, a function-driven relationship is a more important incentive to protect the community. In addition, an interaction effect between place identity and place dependence was observed.
The final hypothesis of this study, Hypothesis 4, postulated that the proposed conceptual model is equivalent across native residents and lifestyle tourism immigrants. This hypothesis was examined through multigroup analysis, and the invariance test showed that the structural model was equivalent for native residents and lifestyle tourism immigrants. The place attachment of lifestyle tourism immigrants is related primarily to the tourism landscape and climatic conditions, whereas native residents emphasize social relations, a sense of belonging and rootedness in their communities. However, although the source of place attachment differs, they all show strong ties and place attachment to the community. Positive emotional ties with a place play an important role in motivating both native residents and lifestyle tourism immigrants to respond to a natural disaster.

5.2. Managerial Implications

These findings have important implications for the sustainability of tourism communities that seek to enhance their adaptive capacity and resilience in response to natural disasters. Residents who develop strong emotional bonds and place attachment to their communities exhibit greater resilience. Community managers in tourism destinations must recognize the role of place attachment in building community resilience. Additionally, tourism communities should develop programs to foster place dependence and place identity among native residents and lifestyle tourism immigrants. Place dependence can be enhanced by improving living conditions and protecting areas of natural beauty and the community environment. In turn, increasing community-based activities and providing historical, cultural, and symbolic landscapes are effective measures to enhance place identity.

5.3. Research Limitations and Future Research Directions

Although this study contributes to the tourism resilience literature by empirically analyzing the influence of place attachment on perceived community resilience in tourism destinations, it is not without limitations. Mainly, it did not develop an integrated conceptual model to investigate the interrelationships among key factors that influence community residents’ perceived resilience, such as place attachment, social capital, and community empowerment. The creation of such a model is an opportunity for future research.

6. Conclusions

In conclusion, this study finds that place identity and place dependence have a positive influence on the perceived resilience of community residents in tourism destinations. Place attachment serves as a catalyst for enhancing tourism community residents’ adaptive capacity to crises and disasters. Previous studies show both negative and positive relations between place attachment and communities’ adaptive capacity. The influence of place attachment on resilience varies according to the specific place and disaster characteristics. When there is a need to resettle and evacuate from communities with a high exposure to natural disasters, strong place attachment constrains migration and can be a barrier to change. However, place attachment has a positive effect when residents protect and reconstruct a community after a disaster. Place attachment affects community resilience in tourism destinations at both an individual level and a collective level. At the individual level, place attachment can encourage community residents to gain new knowledge, protect the community environment, and adapt to change. At the collective level, it can contribute to community cohesion, local social capital, reciprocal social networks, social support, and collective action.

Author Contributions

Y.G. designed the study and wrote the manuscript; J.Z. made substantial contributions to the paper design; Y.Z. and C.Z. collected data and performed the data analysis.

Funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 41501147, 41171121]; Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [grant number 16EYC008]; Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province [grant number 2017A030310475]; Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China [grant number 17YJC790209].

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Figure 1. Proposed conceptual model. CR1–CR4 = four dimensions of perceived community resilience.
Figure 1. Proposed conceptual model. CR1–CR4 = four dimensions of perceived community resilience.
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Figure 2. Results of the structural model.
Figure 2. Results of the structural model.
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Table
Table 1. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis. CR = composite reliability; AVE = average variance extracted value; CR1–CR4 = four dimensions of perceived community resilience.
Table 1. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis. CR = composite reliability; AVE = average variance extracted value; CR1–CR4 = four dimensions of perceived community resilience.
ItemMeanLoadingCRCronbach’s αAVE
The Ability to Perceive Risk and Change (CR1) 0.7480.6800.500
I have many work options.3.500.723
I can find a good job.3.740.777
I can address changes in the tourism industry.3.530.612
The Ability to Reorganize, Learn and Plan (CR2) 0.7830.7250.547
I have a financial security plan. 3.470.725
When faced with change, I make it work for me.3.660.749
I can adapt to change.3.610.745
The Ability to Cope with Risk and Change (CR3) 0.7400.7260.491
I am competitive enough to survive. 3.540.626
I think things will turn out well for me.3.960.653
I will survive in the case of a disaster.3.680.809
The Degree of Interest in Change (CR4) 0.7290.6700.475
I often learn new operating skills.4.020.775
I am using better ways to improve my business.4.040.667
I like trying new things.3.800.617
Place Identity 0.8470.8450.583
I identify strongly with my community.4.020.661
I feel that my community is a part of me.3.880.847
I am very attached to my community.3.870.829
My community means a lot to me.4.010.702
Place Dependence 0.8000.8120.572
My community is the best place to do what I like to do.3.650.729
No other place can compare to my community.3.910.772
I gain more satisfaction from my community than from any other.3.880.767
Table
Table 2. Discriminant validity.
Table 2. Discriminant validity.
123456
1. Place identity 0.764
2. Place dependence0.4930.756
3. CR10.3000.3530.707
4. CR20.4780.4750.6340.740
5. CR30.4460.4830.5240.6780.701
6. CR40.4480.4380.5150.6530.5620.689
Note: Boldface numbers are the square root of AVE.
Table
Table 3. Path coefficients and hypothesis results.
Table 3. Path coefficients and hypothesis results.
HypothesisPathsStandardized Path Coefficients (β)Supported
H1aPlace identity → CR10.15Yes
H1bPlace identity → CR20.29Yes
H1cPlace identity → CR30.26Yes
H1dPlace identity → CR40.29Yes
H2aPlace dependence → CR10.37Yes
H2bPlace dependence → CR20.44Yes
H2cPlace dependence → CR30.44Yes
H2dPlace dependence → CR40.38Yes
H3Place identity ↔ Place dependence0.50Yes
Table
Table 4. The results of equivalence tests of the structural relationships.
Table 4. The results of equivalence tests of the structural relationships.
Modelx2dfx2/df∆x2∆df∆x2/∆dfRMSEACFI∆CFI
Unconstrained668.282872.329---0.0450.910-
Measurement weights685.093002.28416.81131.2930.0440.9090.01
Structural weights705.493082.29120.4082.5500.0440.9060.03

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Guo, Y.; Zhang, J.; Zhang, Y.; Zheng, C. Catalyst or Barrier? The Influence of Place Attachment on Perceived Community Resilience in Tourism Destinations. Sustainability 2018, 10, 2347. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072347

AMA Style

Guo Y, Zhang J, Zhang Y, Zheng C. Catalyst or Barrier? The Influence of Place Attachment on Perceived Community Resilience in Tourism Destinations. Sustainability. 2018; 10(7):2347. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072347

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Guo, Yongrui, Jie Zhang, Yuling Zhang, and Chunhui Zheng. 2018. "Catalyst or Barrier? The Influence of Place Attachment on Perceived Community Resilience in Tourism Destinations" Sustainability 10, no. 7: 2347. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072347

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