The Impacts of Tourism Development in Rural Indigenous Destinations: An Investigation of the Local Residents’ Perception Using Choice Modeling

• Main Authors: Kaowen Grace Chang, Hungju Chien, Hungyao Cheng, Hsin-i Chen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-12-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: rural area development; destination planning; indigenous tourism; tourism impact; choice experiment
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4766

Since indigenous areas have profound ethnic culture and ecological significance and sensitivity, successful tourism development must consider the perceptions of the indigenous community in order to build a mutual relationship grounded on respect and feasibility. The local indigenous communities are influenced by both the positive and negative impacts of tourism. To recognize which tourism impacts are most anticipated and concerning, we determined which and to what extent tourism impacts affect indigenous hosts’ support of alternatives for tourism plans. We used discrete choice modeling in the experiment design for empirical data collection and used mixed-logistic regression to evaluate the influence of each impact on local residents’ perceptions. We rank the effects of socio-culture, economic, and environmental tourism impacts. Our findings suggest that culture-related impacts most improve indigenous residents’ tourism development support. The residents expect economic impacts on both the regional and local scales. However, the results show a willingness to accept pollution following increased tourism. The residents have an adverse opinion of practices that are likely to cause environmental damage. The potential for conflict between local residents and tourists is not important to the local residents. This study contributes essential information to the understanding of tourism impacts from an indigenous perspective.