| Summary: | The launch of sustainable community based rural tourism (CBRT) programs in 1996 by the Ministry of Tourism of Malaysia (MOTOUR) indicated the government's commitment to incorporate sustainable development principles into the national tourism planning and development framework. Since then, the programs have been widely promoted by the government through various agencies and strongly embraced by the rural communities. Although the programs promise much potential such as job creations, provide an alternative of income for the rural household while promoting culture preservation and environment protection, recent studies showed that there was an issue of lack of monitoring of performance and progress of the programs due to the absence of criteria and indicators. From this research point of view, the absence of monitoring tools such as indicators could create obstacles and challenges, especially for the government and other donor agencies, in assessing the return on their investment in the programs and other impacts on the communities involved. Through extensive review of literature, a sufficient number of a preliminary list of criteria and indicators were identified. Each criteria and indicators were assigned into different category of sustainable CBRT namely economic, socio-cultural, environment and institutional. 64 preliminary indicators covered by eight criteria were identified by brought forward for the next stage: formulation of survey questionnaire. The identification and selection of a set of indicators using questionnaire survey was carried out using a Delphi exercise with experts and survey of local stakeholders. For the Delphi exercise, 20 experts were identified (academics, government officials, NGOs and tourism consultants) and consulted during the Stage One of Delphi consultation (selection of importa!lt indicators). However, due to the unavoidable issue of experts' dropout, a smaller number of 11 experts were maintained for Stage Two (ranking of indicators). The surveys of local stakeholders were carried out during the Stage Two involving 85 respondents from three selected villages as case studies (Le. Kuala Medang, Teluk Ketapang and Seterpa) located in the East Coast Economic Region (BCER). As a result, out of 64 indicators initially listed in the survey questionnaire, 47 indicators were selected both by the experts and by local stakeholders and included in the final list of indicators. The fieldwork results indicate that both the experts and local stakeholders are interested to support the idea of indicators formulation for monitoring the CBRT progress. At the final stage of the research, the proposed list of 47 indicators was put to test to assess the applicability and measurability of indicators for monitoring CBRT performances in the three villages i.e. Kuala Medang, Teluk Ketapang and Seterpa where 50 respondents participated in the survey. The field test intended to measure the uptake of sustainable economic, socio-cultural, environment and institution practices of CBRT program in all three villages. The outcomes for the analysis on uptake of CBRT economic and institution practices has shown a moderate success level with both 54% and 76% of an overall achievement while the analysis on uptake of CBRT socio-cultural and environment practices has shown a high success level with both 72% and 52% of an overall achievement. The field test revealed that the proposed indicators have been shown to be useful for measuring CBRT performance in the three case study villages. Furthermore, the achievement of CBR T practices could be determined as either low, or moderate or highly sustainable using index score approach. The results from quantitative and qualitative data collection processes could provide vital information to researchers, local hosts and other stakeholders about the current performance in the CBR T program from all major categories of indicators: economic, social-cultural, and environment and institution. In conclusion, the results from field test of indicators could inform decision makers and the CBRT participants in general about "where they are", i.e. based on the current level of sustainability practices, and "where they want to go", i.e. the local hosts' go~l or target setting for development of CBRT program. More importantly, indicators could also reveal to local hosts and other stakeholders "how far they are from achieving their goal/target".
|
|---|
