Environmental Impact Assessment of Community-based Ecotourism: A Case Study in Ruanbikeng Leisure Agricultural Area

Many countries have determined sustainable development as their main goal for centuries. One of alternative ways to achieve this goal is the Community-based Ecotourism (CBET). CBET itself is a kind of ecotourism that addresses more community member's participation as a key element of its implementation. Additionally, CBET has impacts to the sustainable development's aspects, particularly environment. Based on this background, this study aims to identify environmental impacts of CBET by a case study in Ruanbikeng Leisure Agricultural Area, Taiwan. Subsequent to this, it also estimates the effects of overall satisfaction on visiting behavior of tourists in Ruanbikeng, and evaluates these effects on willingness to pay (WTP) of Ruanbikeng's tourists as well. In this study, most local communities agree that CBET has positive impacts on environment. Although they also realize that CBET also has negative impact, the result only shows an agreement to traffic jam issue as the negative impact of CBET. Then, the visitors are satisfied to the CBET's feature. However, three significant features that affects to their visiting behavior are tour guide, ecological education and natural resources. In the other side, only conservation habitat which is the CBET feature has significant effect to WTP of Ruanbikeng's visitors. Next, recommend to other people and bring friend(s)/relative(s) behavior are two visiting behavior that correlate with WTP of Ruanbikeng's visitors.TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF FIGURES vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1. General Introduction 1 1.2. Aims and Objectives 6 1.3. Scope of Study 6 1.3.1. Research Design 7 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 9 2.1. Ecotourism in Global Perspective 9 2.2. Ecotourism in Rural Area 11 2.3. Ecotourism in Taiwan 14 2.4. Community-based Ecotourism 16 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH MATERIALS AND METHODOLOGY 20 3.1. Study Site 20 3.2. Research Subjects and Sampling Method 21 3.3. Questionnaire Design 23 3.4. Data Analysis 24 3.5. Model Validation 26 3.6. Empirical Models 26 3.6.1. Estimating the Effects of Overall Satisfaction on Visiting Behavior 26 3.6.2. Evaluating the Effects of Overall Satisfaction on Willingness to Pay of Visitors 27 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 29 4.1. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of Community-based Ecotourism (CBET) in Ruanbikeng Leisure Agricultural Area by Local Community's Perception 26 4.2. Visiting Behavior and Willingness to Pay for CBET Development Process of Ruanbikeng Leisure Agricultural Area 36 4.3. Visiting Behavior and Willingness to Pay of Ecotourism's Tourists in Taiwan 42 4.4. Motivation and Willingness to Pay's Comparison between Visitors in Ruanbikeng Leisure Agricultural Area and Taiwan 44 4.5. Summary and Discussion 46 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 49 5.1. Conclusions 49 5.2. Suggestions 50 REFERENCES 51 APPENDICES 60 Appendix A. Map of Ruanbikeng Leisure Agricultural Area 60 Appendix B. Consent Statement for Survey (English and Chinese) 61 Appendix C. Questionnaires for Local Community (English and Chinese) 63 Appendix D. Questionnaires for Visitor of Ruanbikeng Leisure Agricultural Area (English and Chinese) 69 Appendix E. Questionnaires for Ecotourists in Taiwan (English and Chinese) 7