Resident Attitudes Towards Impacts from Tourism Development in Langkawi Islands, Malaysia

Tourism in general has become one of the major cultural and economic forces in the world today and is regarded as an important means to benefit local communities. Langkawi for example, has experienced tremendous development since declared a duty free island in 1987. Many construction projects are carried out on the islands with only one purpose: to accommodate tourism development. Rapid investments by the government and private sector had significantly turned Langkawi into a popular destination and a shopping haven for local and foreign tourists. However, despite the rapid development in this industry, the economic and socio-cultural impacts of tourism were hardly discussed and explained in academic literature. Therefore, a study on Langkawi Islands, Malaysia was conducted to explore and identify impacts of tourism development to the islands and local residents. A household survey based on stratified random sampling was conducted in Langkawi for 8 weeks. 392 questionnaires were completed from 784 respondents approached; representing a 50% response rate for this study. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using principal component analysis was carried out to identify the respondents’ perception of the impacts from tourism development to the Langkawi Islands. Findings from data analysis identified three factors representing 55.63% of the explained variance extracted from 21 variables, namely: 1. Costs from tourism development, 2. Benefits from tourism development and 3. Socio-economic effects from tourism development. Finally, findings from data analysis suggested that tourism development in Langkawi has provided more benefits that costs to the residents.