Casino boom in Macau: exploring casino liberalization's impact on Macau residents' sense of place and theirsatisfaction and support for casino development

Abstract

Since casino liberalization, Macau has been undergoing metaphoric changes that are fundamental, rapid, and far-reaching. This poses a challenge to Macau people to cope with life changing circumstances to the extent of rediscovering their hometown which have changed profoundly as evident by the city‘s ever-changing skyline. Having said so, this study aims to explore the effects of large-scale casino development on Macau residents‘ sense of place, and how their changing sense of place determines their support for casino development. To achieve this study purpose, three interrelated research objectives are laid down for the study. They are (1) to assess the impact of casino liberalization on Macau society, (2) to describe Macau residents’ sense of place amid the casino boom, and (3) to delineate the structural relationship between casino impact, sense of place, place satisfaction, and support for casino development. By using a purely quantitative approach based on a comprehensive resident survey, the study identified both positive and negative casino impact factors as affecting Macau people economically, socially, and environmentally. More importantly, these casino impact factors were also found to exhibit significant predictive power in explaining respondents‘ sense of place intensity, therefore empirically validating a posited relationship between the impact of casino development and inhabitants’ sense of place. The study also found that respondents’ sense of place carried obvious connotations of modernity and exquisiteness because respondents were using everyday vocabularies such as ‘rich’, ‘lively’, ‘developed’, and ‘unique’ to express their perceptions of the new Macau. This brief glossary of words, which characterizes successful urban development, was also found to associate strongly with their sense of place assessments. Finally, the study validated an integrated conceptual model within which the sense of place construct assumes a decisive role in affecting place satisfaction and support for casino development. The contribution of this study lies in the fact it has brought to our attention residents’ sense of place as an important determinant for the success of any large-scale tourism project such as casino development. This study has also provided a new breath to the traditional casino impact studies by taking a new look at an old problem through a cross-disciplinary perspective.