Community Participation In Tourism

Ap and Crompton （1998） conducted a survey in three different tourism communities in Texas, United States, and identified social and cultural factors, economic, crowding and congestion, environmental, services, taxes and community attitudes as seven distinctive dimensions of impacts that the community experience of tourism.

Certain elements, such as socioeconomic and spatial factors, economic dependency, resident and community typologies, and theoretical perspectives （e.g. community attachment, and social exchange and growth machine theories） are important in framing resident attitudes toward tourism in a community （Harrill, 2004）. Harrill （2004） added that citizen participation process can help identify tourism-related issues and groups

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De Kadt （1992） contended that the compulsory call for community control via alternative tourism often neglects the tendency of the local elite to adopt the organs of participation for its own benefits and of the possibilities that these communities will become dependent on outside experts owing to their lack of prior experience in tourism planning （as cited in Tosun, 2000）. Participation in tourism by different interest groups varies with differing groups’ power, objectives, and expectations from community participation, and these factors shape their attitudes towards forms of community participation（ Tosun, 2006）. In relation to the policy formulation and implementation of local tourism in a community, Cascante （2010） studied how a community agency, （i.e. a construction of local relationships with ingredients, such as strong social interaction, community-wide participation, open communication, tolerance etc.）, used to increase the adaptive capacity of local people in a small village of La Fortuna, Costa Rica and attained the sustainable social, economic and environmental goals of local social response mechanisms,

Tosun（ 2000） listed certain operational （centralization of public administration of tourism, lack of coordination, lack of information）, structural（ attitudes of professionals, lack of expertise, elite domination, lack of appropriate legal system, lack of trained human resources, relatively high cost of community participation, lack of financial resources, etc.） and cultural limits （limited capacity of poor people, and apathy and low level of awareness in the local community） to local participation in community tourism in developing countries. These limits exist because of prevailing socio-political, economic and cultural structures although these structures might not equally exist in every tourist destination. Tosun （2000）