Tourism employment and local residents’ engagement in the conservation of the built heritage in Zanzibar Stone Town in Tanzania

Abstract

This study investigated the moderating effect of tourism employment on the relationship between attitudes to conservation, perceived social pressure, and perceived control on one hand, and intention to conserve built heritage on the other. This was an attempt to extend the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) which has been widely applied in conservation studies without integrating tourism factors that may exert effects on the relationships. A questionnaire survey was applied to 208 households in Zanzibar Stone Town. The results of the structural model verify the effect of attitudes, perceived social pressure and perceived control on intention to conserve. They also indicate that tourism employment significantly moderated the attitudes-intention and perceived social pressure-intention relationships. Overall, the study supports the extension of TPB with the inclusion of tourism employment as an important situational factor. Theoretical, policy and managerial implications are discussed.

Going beyond Good Intentions for the Sustainable Conservation of Built Heritage: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Zhang et al [173] identified common themes of conflict for residents, related to the protection of the traditional building (comfort and quality of life, allocation of maintenance duties, or protection regulations, for instance) and the sharing of tourism benefits (profit distribution or property rights, etc.) Like the study of Lwoga [184], it shows that favourable attitudes are the most important variable to determine residents' intention to engage in conflict resolution within cultural heritage management.…”

“…Even if only 11% of the analysed publications refer directly to Ajzen's theories of behavior [74,75,77,80,82,133,135,142,173,174,178,184,197,199], another 8% of the publications directly target behavioural intentions within a similar conceptual framework [76,78,79,83,109,112,115,127,141,150,196]. Together with the studies on behavioural change [84][85][86][87], and targeting decision-makers with a clear methodology [198], these records are further analysed in the next section.…”

“…Despite that, two main approaches emerge in the literature: one targeting environmental protection, and another one more focused on the social dimension, targeting community participation. Lwoga [184] and Yuan et al [82] state that the engagement of local communities is essential to achieve a sustainable heritage management. While Lwoga [184] studies residents' intention to conserve built heritage, Yuan et al [82] focus on residents' intentions to support tourist development.…”

“…Lwoga [184] and Yuan et al [82] state that the engagement of local communities is essential to achieve a sustainable heritage management. While Lwoga [184] studies residents' intention to conserve built heritage, Yuan et al [82] focus on residents' intentions to support tourist development. Additionally, Zhang et al [173] contribute to improve inclusive decision practices, by analysing residents' behaviours towards conflict resolution.…”

“…In the context of built heritage, some authors, i.e., Lwoga [184] and Zhang et al [173], use the TPB to analyse the residents' behavioural intentions in heritage buildings. Lwoga [183] elicits the tourism employment status as a moderator of conservation intentions, by imposing more perceived social pressure over respondents.…”