ABSTRACT
In this chapter, social exchange theory (SET) whose roots date back to Homans (1958) and Blau (1964) is reviewed through tourism perspective. SET has been widely used to explain residents’ perceptions towards tourism or tourism development. From a tourism perspective, individuals who perceive the benefits of exchange, which means interaction between residents and tourists, tend to consider that exchange positive. Thus, residents who benefit from tourism positively consider tourism development. Shortly, SET suggests that possible costs or benefits obtained from this exchange play important role in residents’ evaluation of this exchange process. The main factors that affect residents’ support towards tourism divided into three groups: economic, social and environmental. Tourism studies reveal that SET is still the dominant theory explaining residents’ attitudes towards tourism and its impacts. However, the widespread use of SET in tourism research also increases the amount of criticism of SET. Whereas previous research based on SET have offered an appropriate theoretical framework to explain local people’s attitude towards tourism, recent studies highlight that as SET does not have a “theoretical precision”, researchers have begun to use an existing or new theory.
