“You’re all welcome!”: citizens’ attitudes towards tourism and its development in a post-European Capital of Culture

This article analyzes citizens’ attitudes towards tourism and its development, examining how residents of Sibiu/Hermannstadt, the former European Capital of Culture in Romania, perceive the positive and negative effects of increased tourism. Using an original dataset from a sociological survey (N = 923), the analysis reveals an overwhelmingly positive view of tourism, considered beneficial for the city’s image and the local economy, alongside concerns about its potential negative effects. Through a multiple linear regression analysis, the article explores the characteristics and social attitudes that shape residents’ negative assessments of increasing tourism in the city. The results suggest that negative attitudes stem from dissatisfaction with economic agents’ largely unregulated practices within a state-driven neoliberal model of touristic development that challenges the protection of local cultural heritage. Theorising Sibiu as a touristifying city – an urban formation in which municipal authorities actively promote tourism as the primary engine of economic development while residents broadly legitimate this trajectory – the article advances understanding of how post-socialist contexts shape public responses to tourism-driven urban development in ways that existing frameworks, developed primarily in Western and Southern European settings, do not fully capture. The findings carry implications for both urban tourism research and the sustainable management of tourism cities.