Assessing residents’ perception for a sustainable co-creation of brand identity in regional destinations

Tourist destinations worldwide have started to pay particular attention to the creation of territorial brands to communicate their identity values to visitors and to differentiate their areas from their competitors. In the academic debate, it is claimed that brand creation needs to be achieved through an integrated and sustainable decision-making process that includes the numerous stakeholders that may be involved in a particular destination. Among the various stakeholders, residents are certainly essential to be considered when it comes to building durable and effective destination brands and sustainable development strategies. Although the importance of residents in place branding has been acknowledged in the literature, there is still a lack of conceptual and empirical research regarding their role in the brand creation process and on their perceptions of the brand identity elements that should be conveyed. The main aim of this study is to address this gap by proposing a conceptual framework that will serve to assess residents’ perception of their own destination identity during the brand development process. This framework is tested empirically in the area of Alto Piemonte and perceptions of residents are assessed with an online questionnaire. Thus, the study provides both conceptual reflections that can be used for teaching and research purposes, as well as empirical evidence that enable to conduct similar investigations in other geographical areas.