Sustainable Development of Ecotourism in Bangladesh

Abstract

This study was designed to identify the benefit of local people with the development of ecotourism in Bangladesh. To fulfill the above stated objective this study has been intended to identify the socio-economic status of the local people of various tourism spots, discover the perception of local people regarding ecotourism development, spot out the job opportunity possibilities through ecotourism development, to recognize the relationship between income and consumption pattern• of the local people with the ecotourism development and to check whether the locality is being benefited through ecotourism development. In relation to the objectives of the study and supporting literature, five hypotheses were drawn to be tested through this research. The hypotheses were firstly, local people have positive perception toward ecotourism development; secondly, ecotourism development creates various types of job opportunities for the local people; thirdly, ecotourism development enhances the consumption power of the local people; fourthly, ecotourism development is sustainable livelihood option for the local community and finally ecotourism development enhances the overall development in that locality. To test the above stated hypotheses, interview technique was being undertaken for collecting necessary data from the respondents i.e., local people. Besides the demographic and other issues, the perception of the local people and their feelings regarding economic, social and economic aspects were identified through frequency distribution and weighted average methods. Moreover, three linear regression models have been administered in order to assess the factors that influence, the income, consumption of the local people and community development perspective through ecotourism development. After analyzing the data it was found that most of the family of the local people ranged in between three to eight persons. 78% of the families had one to three children. The education condition was very diss at is factory: 63% of the inhabitant found illiterate and only 52% of their children were found school going, rest were either not goh1g to school or had dropped out from the school. The earning condition of the inhabitants found very diss at is factory. Most of the respondents found not earning enough to fulfill their basic requirements and had income less than TK. 9000 per month. The study also revealed that in a significant portion of the cases expenditure exceeded the income. Tourism related activities found increasingly becoming popular source of job opportunity. Hence, ecotourism development created job opportunities for them and enhanced their income and livelihood. Vast majority of the local people believed that ecotourism development increased various types of facilities for them. If it is being developed further in organized way, it would be able to contribute more in uplifting their livelihoods in various ways. Educational qualification, number of family member and number of children in the family have significant effect on income of the individual. With the increase of level of education and the number of family members, the income tends to increase, whereas with the increase of the number of children the income tends to decrease. This indicates that in relevance to the year of schooling, more the education the more the earning. As there is shortage of educated manpower, those who are comparatively educated can earn more. Large family may help each other for tourism related business and thus can help in earning more. On the other side, families having more children are being involved with child rearing and thus can spend less time in tourism activities and thus can earn less. This study also showed that Marginal Propensity to Savings is 0.32, indicates about one third of the income will be saved thus can be inferred that the consumption and saving increased with the increase in income through the ecotourism development. Therefore it can be revealed that with further development of ecotourism in their locality, the consumption and saving will increase further and thus the livelihood of the local people will develop further. The poor people in the community benefit more from the tourism and local people can live better with tourism than before are significant at one percent level. That means with increase of these factors community benefits would be increased. Side by side there are some factors which are negatively related with the community benefit from the tourism such as the hotel owners do not take into consideration the communities' interest, only the wealthiest benefit from the tourism and few numbers of people are benefited from tourism. These factors are also negatively significant at one percent level. So with the development in these factors the community would be more benefited. With the development of community, the local people consume various types of benefits and thus the livelihood of the local people also increase. This study suggests that the ecotourism development needs proper planning and coordination, without which the development ultimately may not provide total benefit for the country as well as for the locality.