Residents’ opinions and Perceptions of Tourism Development in the Historic City of Matera

The paper aims to understand the residents' perceptions of tourism impact in destination development process. In particular, the development of tourism in Matera should affect the daily life of residents and affect the perception of residents of the impacts of tourism in their communities. The growing number of urban tourists increases the use of natural resources, origins socio-cultural impact, and causes stress on infrastructure, mobility and other facilities. For these reasons, the objectives of our study are to explore the perceptions of the residents of Matera about the impacts of tourism. This paper reports a study, based on Structural Equation Model, about residents' perception on tourism impact. The data are collected with a selfadministered questionnaire on a sample of 250 residents.