Abstract

Against the backdrop of rapid tourism development, conflicts between community residents and foreign tourism investors and local governments are becoming increasingly prominent. This paper focuses on the conflict behaviours of community residents and based on relative deprivation theory, institutional trust theory, and public service perception theory, constructs a theoretical model that includes variables such as institutional fairness, sense of participation, psychological belonging, and perception of benefit distribution. Residents of a popular tourist destination in East China were collected through a questionnaire survey, and the structural equation modelling (SEM) method was used to empirically test the relevant path relationships. The study found that: (1) relative deprivation has a significant positive impact on conflict behaviour; (2) institutional trust plays a partial mediating role between public service satisfaction and conflict behaviour; (3) improving residents’ sense of participation and psychological belonging can effectively alleviate conflict tendencies; and (4) a fair benefit distribution mechanism and environmental governance performance are also key factors influencing residents’ attitudes. Finally, this paper proposes policy recommendations for enhancing institutional trust, optimizing resource allocation, and strengthening community participation.

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