FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY-BASED TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN BANGLADESH

Abstract

The economic condition to some extent of any country largely depends on some socioeconomic indexes. Govt. emphasizes giving importance to these parameters which are economically and socially viable. Some Developed countries like– Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Switzerland give importance to the tourism business. Considering the tourism contribution they explore their tourism activities. Bangladesh has converted into a developing country by 2021. Many economical indexes are considerable behind this achievement. Tourism is one of them. As a matter of great regret that tourism is contributing a little bit to reflect our GDP. The tourism sector couldn’t flourish although so many local and foreign tourists are available in our country. However, the whole contribution of tourists is not reflecting our CBT development. The researcher is trying to know which factors are involved in CBT development at Lawachara along with the community role to explore the CBT development as a whole. For this purpose researcher collected 526 complete questionnaires and applying PLS-SEM to examine the relative effect of various types of the latent construct of CBT development. The researcher has assumed fifteen hypotheses in the study and data analysis confirmed ten out of fifteen hypotheses related to the development of CBT in Lawachara, Moulvibazar. The outlines of the study have been presented in seven chapters as follows. Introductory issues are discussed in chapter one, chapter two gives insights literature of several constructs of this proposed model. Then chapter four explores Lawachara as a CBT destination. Then, chapters five postulate the detailed methodology. Chapter six describes the empirical analysis. Finally, chapter seven draws the discussion along with the conclusive pointers. The summary of these chapters is as follow : Chapter One This chapter covers a general abstract of tourism and CBT development, research problem definition, Scope of the study, objectives, research questions, and justification of selecting the study area along with the slight methodology used in conducting the study, and some pitfalls, as every research outcome may face, have been described to create a practical, comprehensive, reader-friendly and complimentary vision about tourism with special emphasis on community-based tourism development at Lawachara in Bangladesh. Chapter Two The literature on tourism and CBT has become a pivotal theme in social and business research in recent years. Most of the researches in this area has pinpointed on defining the factors of community-based tourism and measuring the outcomes as well as its inner sight impact on the economy, society, and the environment as a whole. The complete literature of different insights like Community-Based Tourism (CBT), community satisfaction, community benefits, and community cost is considered as an endogenous variable. On the other hand environmental factors (religious,socio-cultural, technological, political and legal, and infrastructural), institutional support, financial support, and community demographic profile are considered an exogenous variables. Community engagement as a second-order construct (first-order are-community interaction, involvement, and leadership), community satisfaction, community benefit, and community cost are also considered as exogenous variables depending on hypothesized relationship and model direction. Past researches have found a significant relationship between community engagement, satisfaction, benefits, cost, and CBT development. In the case of environmental factors, support institutions, financial support and demographic profile of the respondent have shown in past research in amalgam findings. All these variables along with operational empirical explanation and findings of the past research have been discussed in this chapter. Chapter Three This chapter conceptualizes the model development based on research gap and social exchange theory.No empirical research followed by structural equation modeling was found by the observation of the researcher. Besides, no study in Bangladesh has been conducted to know the environmental and institutional impact on CBT development. These two constructs are excluded from the essence of SET. SET implies that the involvement of the local community in CBT depends on cost, benefits analysis. These costs and benefit relationship of the different variable with CBT has been depicted in the theoretical model. The hypothetical model has been built up by considering past literature reviews and social exchange theory.

Chapter Four This chapter outlines General Information of Kamalganj Sub-district, History of Establishment of Lawachara National Park, Topography/Physiography, Forest Villages and Interface Villages of study area of Lawachara as the CBT destinations. Chapter Five This section sketches the detailed methodology used in this study. The preliminary four parts of this section discuss the research methodology used, the study designed intended to accomplish the main objective, the research process, and the way be used to accumulate the necessary primary data. Then, the next two sections discuss the data analysis approach applying the PLS-SEM where the statistical approaches like measurement model with relevant parameters and structural model with concerning parameters are utilized to measure the reliability and validity of the research model and testing hypotheses. This chapter additionally confers the phases taken to make the research tool, along with statistical approaches for the demographic data. Chapter Six Structural equation modeling (SEM), including a series of tests such as measurement model, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and common method bias were done before evaluating the structural model. In the measurement model, three constructs like environmental factor, Support Institutions, and community engagement work as a secondorder construct whose Cronbach's Alpha value for all constructs above α.7. For environmental factor CR .68 and AVE .82, for Support Institutions CR .81 and AVE .85 and finally for community engagement CR.80 and AVE .84 respectively Using the Smart PLS Version 3.0. R squares were calculated to evaluate the structural models’ predictive power. Because the goal of the prediction-oriented PLS-SEM approach is to explain the endogenous latent variables’ variance, the key target constructs level of R2 should be high. Deciding whether an R2 level highly depends on the research field of study.

Chapter Seven This chapter indicates that community satisfaction, benefits, and costs are significantly related to CBT development. Besides, financial/ economic supports and community engagement are also needed for CBT development. Environmental factors, support institutions, and local residents’ demographic characteristics have no significant role in this sample for CBT development. Chapter Eight Finally, to explore the CBT development, some appropriate policies and strategies have been advocated based on our analysis. However, this study implies that if the government, related agencies, and peoples’ mindsets are broadened, then Bangladesh might nursing the culture of community–based tourism. In a nutshell, if the policymaker imposes the clear implications of CBT, then it might earn the highest returns for our socio-economic advancement.