Housing, habitability and regressive social exchange: residents’ and non-residents’ perceptions in mature coastal tourist destinations

Mature coastal destinations face growing tensions between tourism's economic contributions and residential costs, yet mechanisms distributing benefits and costs across populations remain theoretically underspecified. Using a face-to-face survey of 960 residents and non-residents across 18 coastal micro-destinations in Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain), this paper examines perceptions of social sustainability through k-means cluster analysis and logistic regression. Findings reveal conditioned acceptance as the dominant configuration: tourism retains legitimacy insofar as it does not erode everyday habitability. Housing emerges as the primary conflict axis across all sub-groups. Three resident profiles are identified – satisfied-integrated (19.5%), ambivalent majority (50%) and tensioned/critical (30.5%). Non-residents mirror resident patterns but express greater scepticism about further tourism expansion, with housing-price negativity and opposition to growth both exceeding resident levels; disaggregating this group further shows non-resident visitors are systematically more critical than non-resident workers. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory, the paper proposes regressive social exchange as an exploratory, sensitising concept, incorporating distributional asymmetry as a candidate analytical dimension for high-intensity mature destinations. The findings carry implications for housing and tourism-growth policy in mature coastal destinations and outline an agenda for future construct validation.