Indonesia Conference Directory

Laut tawar Lake is a tourist attraction located in the Indonesian province of Aceh that has been visited by more than 1,000 tourists during 2018 (www.lintasgayo.com, 2018), in contrast to the attractions of Lake Toba located in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra, more than 381,643 visited during 2018 (www.medanbisnisdaily, com 2018.). The number of tourist visits to tourist destinations to these 2 lakes has contributed to achieving the target of foreign tourist arrivals in Indonesia, which exceeds 12 million (www.kemenpar.go.id, 2018). But the difference in visits by tourists to the two tourist destinations is interesting to examine how the attitude of the residents around the tourist destination to support for the development of future tourism. The research data was collected through distributing questionnaires to residents around freshwater lake and Toba Lake tourist destinations, population samples as many as 139 were obtained for residents around Laut tawar lakes and 174 for residents around Toba Lake using convenience techniques. The research instrument refers to the instrument developed by McGhee and Anderect (2004), namely 5 Likert scales for 5 issues of residents attitudes in tourism development, namely (1) tourism negative impacts, (2) tourism positive impacts, (3) personal benefits from tourism, (4) Support for increased tourism, (5) support for tourism plans. The results of this study showed that the characteristics of the respondents personnel had no effect on the attitude of the tourism negative impact and the tourism positive impact. The personal benefits from tourism is negatively effect on the tourism negative impact, but have a positive effect on the tourism positive impact. Personal benefits from tourism and tourism positive impact affect support for tourism development, while the tourism negative impact negatively affect support for increased tourism. There are differences in attitudes between residents around the Laut tawar and Toba Lakes in support for tourism development, this Phenomena supported the social exchange theory that the change of tourism development lead change the resident perception (Ap. J : 1992).