Applying relative deprivation theory to study the attitudes of host community residents towards tourism: the case study of the Zhangjiang National Park, China

Host community is one of the most important stakeholders involved in tourism development. Their attitudes and supports for tourism are highly significant to underpin the sustainable development of the industry. However, host community has not been attached adequate importance, and is usually marginalised to be a salient disadvantaged group in the process of tourism development. Although relative deprivation theory (RDT) provides a powerful theoretical tool to analyse the attitudes of disadvantaged social groups, the theory has rarely been documented in tourism literature. This paper takes the case of tourism development in the Zhangjiang National Park, China, and applies RDT to empirically examine how and why host residents suffer from the relative deprivation problem resulting from tourism development and attempts to unveil its influence on their attitudes towards tourism development. The study indicates that there exists a close and negative correlation between the locals' relative deprivation and their attitudes towards tourism development. The more host residents suffer from relative deprivation, the more negative their attitudes towards tourism are, and vice versa. Furthermore, the Relative Deprivation Index proposed in this study proves to be simple and effective in quantitatively depicting the spatial differences/heterogeneity of relative deprivation issues in the case study area.