Community Participation in Sustainable Tourism Management at Bang Khonthi District, Samut Songkhram Province

Abstract

         The objectives of this research were 1) to study the level of community participation in sustainable tourism management at Bang Khonthi District, Samut Songkhram Province 2) to compare community participation according to demographic factors 3) to study the relationship between community knowledge and understanding in the sustainable tourism and community participation 4) to study the relationship between the community opinions towards the sustainable tourism and the community participation. The data were collected by questionnaires. The statistics employed in this research were frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, One Way ANOVA and LSD, and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. The level of significance was set at .05.  

The findings revealed that the level of community participation in sustainable tourism management at Bang Khonthi District, Samut Songkhram Province was at the moderate level (  = 3.23 and S.D. = .65) The hypothesis testing showed that the differences in sex, age, status, occupation, and income had differences in the community participation, except for education. Community’s knowledge and understanding had a weak positive relationship with community participation (r = .169). In addition, Community’s opinion towards sustainable tourism had a correlated relationship with community participation (r = .378).