Assessment of Tourism Industry Impact: the Perception of Local Community in Gjirokastër, Albania

This paper addresses the community perception of tourism benefits by analyzing the factors that influence this perception: social, economic, infrastructural and institutional factors in the Gjirokastër region. Data were collected through questionnaires. The data were analyzed through SPSS software version 21. To evaluate the influence of independent variables on community perception of benefits from tourism, we used Bivariate Correlation to analyze the relations between variables and a Multivariate Linear Regression model to relate the independent variables to the dependent variable. At the end of the paper, it was found that Pearson correlation analysis indicates that all four dimensions of the tourism industry social, economic, infrastructural, and institutional- are positively correlated and statistically significant. The final regression model suggests that while the factors incorporated are significant, additional external variables not captured in the model may also play a role in shaping the dependent variable.