Community Perception towards Mount Gunna Conservation Area for Tourism Development
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Date
2020-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Perception is an important element to determining how resident’s involvement is essential in
community-based conservation area for tourism development. This study assesses community
perception towards Mount Gunna Community-Based Conservation Areas for tourism development,
Northern Ethiopia. Both qualitative (KII, FGD and observation) and quantitative (201 household
survey) were employed to generate relevant data. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the
quantitative data using SPSS version 20 and the qualitative data was analyzed parallel, thematically
and triangulation system. The study area is endowed with rich flora and fauna diversities that can be
used as an important imputes for tourism development. The study result revealed that, 71.9% (group
mean 3.68) and 53.55% (group mean 3.19) of the respondents concluded that, communities have
negative perceptions due to loses of free resources, unfair benefit sharing, unappropriated use of
power. The study concluded that, if the Communities have good awareness and good participation in
the study area, the type of benefit gained is not satisfied them and have negative perception towards
tourism development, Meanwhile, they think as they are suffering a lot of losses in repairing damaged
properties. The study recommended that, provided tangible benefits and other optional livelihood for
communities in all stages in the study area should be considered as an essential assumption for
conservation area management and communities well develop positive perception about tourism
development. Changing perceptions of residents towards tourism development is not only enough, but
also their attitudes in relation to the benefits accrued to them from tourism development.
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Keywords
Community, Conservation, Tourism Development, Perception