The influence of tourism on Soweto's residents' subjective well-being

Abstract

Tourism is one of the world's most valuable industries and a very important tool for economic growth. However, once tourism development occurs in an area, it alters the physical landscape of the area and it has an influence on the life domains of the residents of the area where it occurs. Tourism's influence on residents' life domains may also affect their subjective well-being (satisfaction with life) as well as residents' support for further tourism development. Therefore, the main goal of this study was to determine the influence of tourism on Soweto's residents' subjective well-being. To achieve this goal, various objectives were set. The first objective was to analyse communities from a sociological perspective with specific reference to social tourism concepts. This was achieved through an analysis of literature, which revealed tourism's sociological attributes, residents' role in tourism and the relationship between residents and tourism through the use of social tourism concepts. The second objective was to analyse literature pertaining to subjective well-being, satisfaction with life as well as residents' support for further tourism development. This was done by means of a review of literature based on the concepts of subjective well-being, satisfaction with life, the relationship between tourism and satisfaction with life, as well as a review of life domains that are mostly affected by tourism. Furthermore, factors that influence residents' support for tourism were also reviewed. The third objective was to do a comparison of residents residing close to tourism activities and residents residing further away from tourism activities in Soweto. Furthermore, the objective was to discuss the results of the empirical study with a focus on the main goal of this study. To achieve the objective, a total of 276 questionnaires were distributed to residents who reside close to tourism activities and those who reside further away from tourism activities. Microsoft Excel was used to capture the data and the statistical calculations included descriptive analysis. SPSS was utilised to conduct the statistical analysis. The descriptive results revealed that tourism has a major influence on residents who reside close to tourism activities as compared to residents who reside further away from tourism activities. However, both groups are in favour of further tourism development. Correlations, an independent sample T-test, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) were other techniques used to analyse data. All the correlations among the confirmed factors were positive and have statistically significant relationships. The T-test analysis revealed that there were no significant differences between residents who reside close to tourism activities and residents who reside further away from tourism activities. The CFA analysis successfully confirmed all factors and the SEM produced a model that reveals a linear relationship among all confirmed factors. Furthermore, all factors in the SEM were statistically significant and produced an acceptable goodness of fit, which achieved the main goal of the study. The final objective was to draw general conclusions, contribution and, limitations of the study, and to make recommendations that will be directed to key role-players in the tourism industry as well as community leaders in Soweto. The major contribution of this study was that the study is the first of its kind within the South African context, as it looks at the influence of tourism on the SWB (SWL) of residents of a township.