Understanding factors influencing community life satisfaction towards sustainable heritage tourism destination: the case of Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Many countries focus more attention on their tourism potential as a tool for their regional economic development. Tourism has been generally recognized as a positive economic driver that has led many governments and community leaders in Southeast Asia region to treat tourism as an important aspect to improve the economic condition. Besides economic impact, tourism also has potential impact from different aspects, such as social, cultural and environmental. Community is considered one of the important pillars in the tourism planning process for sustainable tourism in the long run. However, understanding on how tourism perspective/concepts impact on a community's life satisfaction and community support in this region have not been well researched. The need to examine and analyse the relationship between community residents’ perceived tourism benefits impact (economic, cultural, social and environmental) on community's life satisfaction and support is important in order to have a sustainable heritage tourism development. Yogyakarta is considered as one of the favourite tourists' destination in Indonesia and in Southeast Asia. Moreover, it is known as one of the heritage tourism destination that is rich with cultural, historical and traditional appeal for tourists in this region. Using survey with purposive sampling method among residents that reside surroundings the tourism objects, the study managed to collect 250 usable respondents. The PLS results indicate that community perception of tourism economic and cultural benefits influenced the community's life satisfaction and community support. However, the perceived tourism social and environmental benefits did not influence the community life satisfaction. The results also show that a community's life satisfaction had significant impact on community support in sustainable heritage tourism development.