Ecotourism as Community Development Tool – Development of an Evaluation Framework

Thomas Winkler, Friedrich Zimmermann

Abstract


Ecotourism can be seen as a tool for community development, especially when focusing on community empowerment as essential core element as well as ecotourism and how it is influenced by a community-based project. The emphasis is on positive effects of ecotourism on a community as well as on the individual tourist. In order to create a research framework, system theory was used to include all stakeholders as well as inputs and outputs. It shows not only a clear connection between ecotourism and community empowerment but also the mutual influence of additional system elements such as the evaluation framework, internal stakeholders and system parameters such as weather and climate. For the evaluation framework for successful community empowerment through ecotourism projects a set of indicators has partly been adapted and created in order to be applicable to the evaluation of various kinds of ecotourism projects in diverse surroundings. Therefore, this framework can be applied to ecotourism projects with different geographical, historical and cultural background and is still able to deliver comparable results. The evaluation framework was tested through questionnaires and interviews in case studies in Nepal, which included three different target groups; community members, project workers and tourists. The main goals of this study are to show how ecotourism projects can positively contribute to community development, to create an evaluation framework that can help to identify common strengths and weaknesses of different projects and to improve the respective case study projects in Nepal.

Keywords


ecotourism, community development, community empowerment, evaluation framework, Nepal

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