Investigating community participation and resilience in community-based tourism development to advance sustainable tourism: the case of Turkey

Date

2024-8

Author

Altınok, Aysun

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

171
views

66
downloads

Cite This

Despite being heavily impacted by the crisis, the tourism sector continues to experience significant growth. The concepts of sustainability and resilience are becoming increasingly important, especially in light of the unexpected events and crises encountered in recent years. Community-based tourism (CBT), a form of sustainable tourism, has gained prominence in the literature as a means to develop communities, particularly in rural areas, while simultaneously protecting social, cultural, and natural values. Although there are existing studies on CBT, this research is significant due to the limited number of studies, especially in Turkey, and the need for more literature on community participation, resilience, and sustainability. The research provides valuable information to policymakers, researchers, and project managers to help them understand and achieve sustainable and resilient tourism development, particularly in developing countries focusing on CBT. This thesis aims to examine the CBT initiatives developed under the leadership of various actors in rural areas within a comprehensive framework, revealing the effects of local control over tourism resources and participation in decision-making processes on community resilience. This research assumes that CBT initiatives, as a bottom-up approach, with a high level of local control and participation have a positive effect on resilience. Accordingly, CBT is presented as an alternative type of tourism that promotes sustainable development and reduces the community's social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities. To achieve this, a case study research method was employed, allowing for a comparative analysis of the CBT initiatives in Cumalıkızık, Misi, Ormana, and Ürünlü villages. This analysis aimed to understand the different processes involved and to uncover the relationship between local participation and resilience. An explanatory approach was adopted, involving 19 semi-structured in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in the areas, 112 surveys administered to individuals involved in the tourism sector, and participant observation. The research findings indicate that in CBT initiatives, the community impact of tourism development is greater when led by local residents, and local participation in decision-making regarding tourism development increases with the level of local control and ownership over tourism resources. Accordingly, it is concluded that increasing community participation positively affects sustainability, as well as social, economic, institutional, and ecological resilience, and enhances the community’s transformative potential and crisis management capacity in the face of unexpected events. In this context, the lack of an institutional structure for the development of CBT and reliance on individuals highlights the issues of sustainability and resilience in tourism. To fundamentally address this problem, national policies must be developed, and flexible institutional structures must be established at different scales.

Subject Keywords

Sustainable tourism, Community based tourism, Community development, Participation, Resilience

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/111320

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis