Understanding Communities’ Disaffection to Participate in Tourism in Protected Areas: A Social Representational Approach

Abstract

This manuscript uses a social-representational approach that allows for including social interactions, history and cultural background to explain and cluster resident attitudes to tourism in protected areas in developing countries. Based on the published evidence on the failure of community-based tourism programmes and projects that aim to achieve community engagement and benefits, and on scholars attributing those failures to the lack of consideration given to the perceptions and ambitions of the communities, that in turn are split into different groups that perceive tourism dissimilarly, we propose a pathway to encouraging community engagement and participation. Field work carried out throughout the settlements neighbouring the National Park of La Langue de Barbarie in northern Senegal allowed to identify three group profiles: The largest minority are reluctant to accept any type of tourism at all, a second minority actively supports another type of community-based tourism, more locally centred, and a third group consists of those mainly wanting to escape their unwanted existence and migrate. We conclude that, to achieve successful sustainable tourism development, interventions should capacitate the group that supports tourism to lead initiatives, seduce the reluctant ones, energise those who seek to migrate and negotiate with the external tourist agents to achieve more equitable tourism development in which locals actively participate.

Evaluating Residents’ Perceptions of Nature-Based Tourism with a Factor-Cluster Approach

“…Meanwhile, the identified group "Somewhat Irritated" in this study is similar to labels of "Haters," "Cynics," and "Opponents" in previous studies [57,58,60,61,64]. As has been suggested elsewhere by Sarr et al [84], such findings can create community "interventions should capacitate the group that supports tourism to lead initiatives, seduce the reluctant ones, energize those who seek to migrate and negotiate with the external tourist agents to achieve more equitable tourism development in which locals actively participate. "…”

The Society’s Heterogeneity Regarding Attitudes towards Tourism: A Cluster Analysis of the Ibiza Residents

“…One of the first published segmentations is a study conducted on the Sleat peninsula (Isle of Skye) in Scotland [21][22][23]. Since then, studies have been carried out in various regions of the world: Australia [24][25][26][27][28], Brazil [29], Cambodia [30], Cape Verde [31], China [32][33][34][35][36], Croatia [37], Greece [38,39], Italy [17,[40][41][42][43][44], Malaysia [45], Mexico [46], New Zealand [5,[47][48][49], Portugal [50], Senegal [51], Spain [52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61], Sweden [62], Türkiye [63], United Kingdom [21][22][23]…”

Inovasi Perencanaan Pembangunan Berbasis Ekowisata: Sebuah Kajian Pustaka Sistematis

“…Dalam hal ini, perencanaan pembangunan juga dapat dikaitkan dengan pembangunan pariwisata berkelanjutan sebagai output dalam konteks perubahan suatu wilayah. Untuk mencapai pembangunan pariwisata berkelanjutan yang sukses, intervensi harus memberi kemampuan kepada kelompok yang mendukung pariwisata untuk memimpin inisiatif, merayu yang enggan, memberi energi kepada mereka yang ingin bermigrasi dan bernegosiasi dengan agen wisata eksternal untuk mencapai pembangunan pariwisata yang lebih adil dimana penduduk setempat berpartisipasi aktif (Sarr et al, 2020).…”