| dc.description.abstract | ABSTRACT
The study was conducted in Bunyaruguru around Queen Elizabeth national park to assess the attitudes of communities towards tourism benefit sharing. The study was guided by objectives; to examine the nature and scope of local people participation and involvement in tourism development process in Bunyaruguru villages, to assess if tourism businesses in the area have developed benefit-sharing schemes and to find out the different ways of tourism benefit sharing with the local community of Bunyaruguru villages. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect primary data while secondary data was sourced from published and unpublished sources like books and journals. The target population consisted of local residents living adjacent to the park and management staff of queen Elizabeth National Park and business owners. A sample of 41 respondents was randomly selected from the local community while 5 respondents were purposively chosen from among Queen Elizabeth National Park staff and data was analyzed using SPSS. The study revealed that all most all respondents knew the meaning of the word community attitudes towards tourism. Majority reported taking part in different activities that influence their attitudes towards the tourism development which were identified as guarding and selling of tourism products, encouraging conservation of wildlife and creating awareness about tourism and sensitization of people. The study further revealed that local community’s attitudes are mostly influenced by employment opportunities, income generation with improved service to the community, revenue sharing policies and promotion of markets for the crafts among others. The nature of employment is an important factor when assessing the resident’s attitudes towards tourism in the area. The study further indicated that there are different positive tourism attitudes benefit with local people which was reflected in benefits are shared economically, environmental benefits as well as social cultural benefits and through groups and patternship. The park staff interviewed reported that they have creates schemes that considered local people for job opportunities, at least for certain categories of jobs. However, the scheme differed from one village communities to another depending on the nature of the nature of the business. It was based on these findings that the study recommends that Queen Elizabeth park management should aim at not only changing attitudes and perceptions of the local people towards wildlife conservation, but their behavior in relation to the benefits stakeholders and aggressive marketing campaign should be done by both government and private tourism operators to promote the existing tourism benefits so that people can easily participate to grab such benefits | en_US |
