Understanding how a rural Islamic enclave feels about supporting tourism development for their community

This paper aims to enhance the meaningfulness of resident support for tourism development studies, that are largely based on a costs/benefits analysis. An undeveloped rural Islamic enclave is used as a case study. Reported outcomes for this popular stream of research vary widely because of inconsistent conceptualization and measurement of concepts, together with resident community heterogeneity. The paper develops a framework to assist researchers in generalizing their results. In addition, we conduct an empirical study to illustrate the benefits of such a framework, using trust as a moderator. A survey of 236 residents was conducted in a rural Islamic community at a nascent stage of tourism development. The impact of economic benefits on resident support was significant for residents with a low level of trust in local government officials. In contrast, a social benefit factor was important for residents’ with high levels of trust in local officials. Using trust in local government actors as a moderating influence is novel to the literature.