Guided by the Cognition-Affect-Behavior (CAB) model of attitudes, this study examines how place attachment (PA) is associated with residents' behavioral intention to support tourism development (BISTD) through two distinct affective pathways: perceived direct displacement (PDD) and perceived indirect displacement (PID). We focus on a gentrifying historic district in Haikou, China, and analyze survey data from 694 residents using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Results show that PA is positively associated with both PDD and PID. In turn, PDD is positively associated with BISTD, whereas PID is negatively associated with BISTD. Both PDD and PID statistically mediate the association between PA and BISTD, but in opposite directions. In addition, length of residency (LoR) moderates the association between PA and BISTD: among long-term residents (LoR ≥ 1 year), the negative association between PA and BISTD is significantly stronger than among short-term residents (LoR < 1 year). These findings extend the CAB model by demonstrating that the affective component is not a single, uniformly positive pathway, but can be decomposed into two appraisal-based displacement processes that lead to divergent behavioral intentions. The study highlights how place-based identity, perceived exclusion, and temporal embeddedness jointly shape residents' attitudes towards urban change in tourism-affected neighborhoods.
Wang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.