Community Perception towards Mount Gunna Conservation Area for Tourism Development

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Date

2020-06

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Publisher

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

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