Baral Rekha, Rijal Deepak Prasad
Department of Economics, Janata Campus, Nepal Sanskrit University, Dang, Nepal.
Department of Economics, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Heliyon. 2022 Aug 27;8(8):e10395. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10395. eCollection 2022 Aug.
Tourism universally generates benefits and costs to the destination and community. Knowledge on the impacts of tourism on local communities provides important insight in formulating strategies for long term sustainable tourism. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate the impacts of tourism before establishing/expanding the industry at a particular destination. In this study, we assessed the economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits of tourism in a remote mountainous village that experiences the high pressure of tourism activity. Data were collected for the perceived and anticipated social, economic, and environmental costs/benefits of tourism via in person interview with local residents, hotel owners, and local governmental bodies through unstructured questionnaire survey. The data were analysed using a Leopold matrix. The result revealed that tourism generates noteworthy economic and social benefits to the destination community, while environmental benefits are not obvious. The negative impacts in all the three aspects are minimal and within the threshold limit. Our quantitative assessment revealed that the net impact of tourism in Ghorepani is impressively positive (>40%). The findings of this result thus suggest that tourism is the most lucrative industry of Ghorepani and its further promotion can contribute to the broader enhancement of social and economic status of the village. This finding may have greater implications beyond the case study, and suggests that tourism if extended as the primary industry in other similar mountainous villages can play a pivotal role to enhance the socio-economic status of the country. Thus, the current findings provide important insights in formulating plans and policies for the management of sustainable tourism across the mountainous destinations.
旅游业普遍会给目的地和社区带来益处和成本。了解旅游业对当地社区的影响，能为制定长期可持续旅游战略提供重要见解。因此，在特定目的地建立/扩大旅游业之前，有必要评估旅游业的影响。在本研究中，我们评估了一个承受着旅游活动巨大压力的偏远山村旅游业的经济、社会和环境成本与效益。通过与当地居民、酒店业主和地方政府机构进行非结构化问卷调查的面对面访谈，收集了有关旅游业在感知和预期方面的社会、经济和环境成本/效益的数据。使用利奥波德矩阵对数据进行了分析。结果显示，旅游业给目的地社区带来了显著的经济和社会效益，而环境效益并不明显。这三个方面的负面影响都很小，且在阈值范围内。我们的定量评估显示，旅游业在戈雷帕尼的净影响令人印象深刻地呈积极态势（>40%）。这一结果表明，旅游业是戈雷帕尼最赚钱的产业，进一步推广旅游业有助于更广泛地提升该村庄的社会和经济地位。这一发现可能在案例研究之外具有更大的意义，并表明如果将旅游业扩展为其他类似山村的主导产业，它可以在提升国家社会经济地位方面发挥关键作用。因此，当前的研究结果为制定山区目的地可持续旅游管理的计划和政策提供了重要见解。
