| Summary: | 碩士 === 真理大學 === 管理科學研究所 === 96 === The value of ecotourism is to reduce environmental impact, improve individuals’ responsibility, and promote local communities with economic incentives in the course of traveling. Given the example of Yangmingshan National Park, theoretically it could be viewed as an appropriate locale developing ecotourism through its functions with conservation, research, and recreation. However, huge amount of tourists usually cause recreational pressure, improper planning, and a lack of supportive participation from different sectors of people, as a result, the administration of protected areas often face with a great challenge between natural resource conservation and recreational demands.
At present, ecotourism in Taiwan is insufficient in addressing multi-stakeholders. Yet, relevant literature point out that a key to success of ecotourism is dependent upon involvement of stakeholders. In other words, the greatest challenge in development of ecotourism is in a seek of ways for balancing different demands and purposes of multi-stakeholders who are being involved in the course of planning. Through a well communication mechanism among stakeholders, it is believed that collaboration on management would be found. So, this paper is proposed to build the conceptual indicators in regard to the stakeholders' roles and demands for ecotourism in Yangmingshan National Park. By recognizing their different views and expectations, a consensus on planning toward ecotourism in protected areas could be established.
This study adopted Yangmingshan National Park, located in the suburb of Taipei City, as the site, and utilized Modified Delphi Technique for data collection. The target sample includes park managers, travel agents, local residents, ecotourists, and non-governmental environmental organizations. A total of five major subjects and 17 stakeholders were selected as the panel of experts. The questionnaire contains 15 main concepts and 58 conceptual indicators. Through three-round Delphi questionnaire administered, the level of agreement regarding to those conceptual indicators was identified. Finally, 13 main concepts and 45 conceptual indicators were highly accepted by the experts as means of Median and Quartile Deviation utilized to determine their consistency and importance.
The results of the study showed that the indicator rated as important the most is 'Travel agents should avoid misbehaviors during tourism planning'. Among the indicators marked as moderate important, 'The local residents need to support developing ecotourism in their communities' was highly valued. Based on three-round analytic results, it showed that except for 'Park managers should conduct investigation of recreational carrying capacity', 'Park managers should well-recognize ownership of environmental resources', 'Travel agents offers a proportion of surplus as environmental conservation fund', 'Ecotourists should possess a certain level of literacy toward ecotourism', and 'Ecotourists should realize the nature merit of the ecotourism site itself' were recognized as moderate consensus, the remaining indicators all reached a high level of consensus.
According to the study results, the conceptual indicators that were not reached to the common consensus among those stakeholders were further discussed. Finally, it is expected that these conceptual indicators constructed would be useful for park managers to planning as ecotourism occurs in the area.
|
|---|
