Beyond personal gain: how tourism legitimacy shapes residents’ support for tourism development

While conventional studies portray residents as self-interested actors driven by cost-benefit calculations, this study argues that collective interests also shape resident support, drawing on evidence from Guizhou Province, a multi-ethnic region in southwest China renowned for its well-preserved minority cultures. Guided by Weber’s Theory of Formal and Substantive Rationality (WTFSR), we develop and validate an alternative model through three sequential studies. Study 1 used in-depth interviews with 45 residents to identify tourism legitimacy as a key construct and to establish a preliminary theoretical framework. Building on these insights, Study 2 developed and validated a contextualized tourism legitimacy scale through a two-round field survey (N = 888). Study 3 then tested the full model using a separate survey dataset (N = 969). The findings confirm that tourism legitimacy mediates the effect of gain-loss assessments on resident support. By integrating legitimacy as a substantive rationality construct, this study extends resident support theory beyond the dominant cost–benefit paradigm.