Riverside spaces are attractive to tourists because these spaces have good natural water landscape. However, these spaces have been relevant to residents' life patterns for a long time and functioned as residents' life spaces. For these reason, it is important to survey the residents' opinions when governments adopted the tourism development policies at riverside spaces. This study analyzes the cognitions and attitudes of regional residents around the riverside about waterfront tourism development. The Gapyeong-gun where riverside tourism development have progressed was selected as the study site, two hundred five residents' responses are analyzed using factor analysis and regression. Before the questionnaire survey, the study chooses twenty cognition variables and eight attribute variables about waterfront tourism development based on some literature reviews. This study finds that the four factors among cognition variables and the two factors among eight variables are revealed. Finally, economic and socio-cultural factors affect the residents' attitude about riverside development, but additional longitudinal research is needed about residents' cognitions and attitudes.