Regional Mountain Conference

Resident support is widely recognised as a key condition for sustainable heritage tourism development, yet it is often conceptualised as a measurable and largely linear attitudinal outcome. Such simplification obscures the socially embedded, dynamic and historically situated nature of support, particularly in heritage mountain destinations where residents simultaneously act as heritage custodians, tourism workers and everyday hosts. When these multiple roles are overlooked, resident support becomes difficult to interpret, leading to governance and policy interventions based on fragile assumptions.

This study argues that resident support should be understood as a dynamic social process rather than a static evaluative position. Adopting a social sustainability perspective, the research rethinks resident support by introducing a temporal dimension that captures how attitudes are shaped by residents’ experiences of the past, evaluations of the present and expectations for the future. Rather than redefining the concept itself, the study focuses on identifying the social, economic and governance-related mechanisms through which differentiated forms of support are produced.

Empirically, the research draws on a large-scale quantitative survey conducted in Mt. Lu, a major Chinese mountain heritage destination characterised by strong tourism dependence and the close interweaving of cultural and natural heritage. Survey data from 501 residents reveal a structured attitudinal system comprising multiple latent dimensions across Place Attachment, Community Involvement and Resident Support. Cluster analysis further identifies three resident groups—Low-supporters, Qualified-supporters and High-supporters—each exhibiting distinct configurations of value orientations, behavioural engagement and evaluative judgements.

The findings demonstrate that resident support does not operate along a simple continuum from opposition to endorsement, but emerges through qualitatively different combinations of affective, behavioural and evaluative orientations. By reframing resident support through a social sustainability lens, the study contributes conceptually to debates on resident–destination relations, empirically to heritage mountain tourism research in China, and analytically to more socially attuned approaches to destination governance and transformation.