Understanding Tourism Impacts on the Sense of Place in Destinations: A Grounded Theory Strategy (Case Study: Lavasan)

Tourism is a place-base phenomenon that may change place components of destinations and influence the sense of place of local residents. Whereas tourism industry success needs the support of the host community, host society must have positive perception, so this issue recently has drawn attention of the researchers. Therefor this paper intends to achieve understanding of tourism impacts on the sense of place in Lavasan as a case study. In order to achieve this goal, interpretivism paradigm, qualitative methodology and theoretical and Snowball Sampling were used and also grounded theory was used for analyzing data. 36 people selected from host community for interviewing. Analysis of obtained concepts showed 21 concepts and 10 categories which led to the final grounded model. Results show that rapid growth of tourism because of Lavasan specific location has changed place and perception of it’s semantic dimensions especially symbolic, emotive and values meaning rapidly and has made the adaptability with troubles for residents. These matters in the context situations cause the negative reaction and attitude toward tourism and missing linkages with the place that overall has most negative impacts on the sense of place and consequently reduction of tourism support.