Comparing The Impacts Of Community-Based Tourism Development On Local Livelihoods And Empowerment

Abstract

For decades, policymakers, scholars, and development practitioners have promoted community-based tourism (CBT) for sustainable development in socioeconomically marginalized rural communities. However, the mixed results of these initiatives warrant further study into the mechanisms through which community-management of tourism leads to local livelihood opportunities and community empowerment. This dissertation responds to this need through a comparative case study of CBT management models in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala. Different trajectories of community tourism involvement in the three gateway towns to the most visited parks in the reserve make it possible to study the role of community-tourism management compared to tourism development in strictly protected areas and in the private sector, in the local livelihood and empowerment outcomes of tourism. During approximately 10 cumulative months of ethnographic field research in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, I applied the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) and Community Empowerment Framework to compare the impacts of tourism and its role in residents’ livelihood activities. Through semi-structured interviews, focus groups, content analysis, participant observation, and 134 livelihood surveys with household heads across the three towns, I find that community-based management of tourism supports a wider distribution of local tourism income-earning opportunities and overall greater local empowerment than conventional growth-oriented, private sector led tourism development in strictly protected areas, in part through emphasis on training opportunities and recognition of the compatibility and tradeoffs between tourism and residents’ other livelihood activities. Nonetheless, difficulties achieving social unity and differential individual barriers to tourism participation make ensuring equitable tourism community-tourism development an ongoing challenge. Tourism becomes part of integrated household livelihood portfolios, rather than supporting households alone or replacing small-scale agricultural activities. Overall, this dissertation contributes to understandings of the role of CBT in sustainable development as well as a methodology for more closely analyzing and comparing the livelihood outcomes of tourism development.