Community Participation in Tourism Development: Case Study of Sananrak Municipal,Thanyaburi District, Prathumthani Province, Thailand

Abstract

The objective of this research is to study and compare the involvement of Sananrak Municipal’s community (Thanyaburi District, Prathumthani Province, Thailand) in tourism development based on residential domiciles such as gender, community tourism awareness and duration of stay in the community. 380 resident participants were selected through common random sampling from the total Sananrak Municipal population of 22,278. Structured questionnaire was distributed to the respondents and results were collected and computed using SPSS. Further statistical analysis of average, standard deviation, t-test and one-way ANOVA was conducted to know the outcomes. The study found that the community’s participation in tourism development, in overall view, is in high level. However, in community participation in tourism development by domiciles, this research found that people who live inside the area have higher participation for community tourism development than people who live outside the area with a statistical significance level of <.01. On the other hand, the study found that females have higher participation in tourism development than males but with no statistically significant difference. People who acknowledged that there is community participation in tourism development have higher participations in community tourism than people who have no acknowledgement with a statistical significant level of .01. And also, people who were born in the community have higher participations in tourism development than people who were born outside of area with a statistically significant level of < .01.

Keywords: Participation, Community Based Tourism