Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

INVESTIGATING LOCAL COMMUNITY’S PERCEPTION ON TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN PROTECTED AREAS: A STUDY ON SUNDERBANS TIGER RESERVE, INDIA

Ananya Ghosh, Pankaj Kumar Tyagi and Pawan Gupta

Abstract

Tourism is a path-breaking opportunity for communities all over the globe to generate a living. Tourism has contributed to economic and social welfare by uplifting inter-community relations, increasing employment opportunity and increasing income. On the other hand, it has also increased the price of essential goods and increased pollution world-wide. This paper aims at evaluating the impact of tourism development on the local community and evaluate the difference between the impact and gender perception of the impact. Convenience and snowballing sampling technique has been used for data collection from 100 locals population residing near Sunderbans Tiger Reserve, West Bengal, India. Descriptive statistics analysis is used to measure the tourism development impacts on the local community. In addition, One-Way MANOVA is used to evaluate the difference between the impact and gender perception of the impact. The finding shows that there is a positive impact of tourism development on job opportunities, infrastructural development, increased income, environment cost, and education development. The finding also depicts that males and females have a statistically significant in all factors except increased income and increased price level.