Social and economic effects of tourism on households living adjacent to source of the Nile, Jinja

Abstract

This report was based on the topic “Socio-economic effects of tourism on households living adjacent to the source of the Nile:’ The objectives of the study were to assess the positive and negative social and economic effects of tourism on households, examine ways in which the effects of tourism trickle to the households and their response to the effects and assess strategies for sustaining positive tourism and mitigating negative effects at the source of the Nile.

Data was collected from 50 households using simple random sampling method. The selection of households was based on the fact that they are located near and along tourism developments. A structured questionnaire was divided into four sections to ease the process of soliciting information and data.

The results show that households living adjacent to the source of the Nile benefit from tourism in ways such as increase in job opportunities, a better quality of life for local people who earn some income from tourism and their livelihoods have improved but also get negatively affected by it in ways such as; increase in crime rates, over exploitation of local people, restricted access to the source of the Nile. The positive socio-economic effects of tourism such as provision of employment to the local people, positive interaction between the locals and tourists and improvement in the quality of life of the locals trickle to the households compared to the negative ones such as; intrusion of outsiders makes locals resent tourism, increase in crime rates and copying bad behaviors of locals. There are a number of strategies that can be applied to sustain positive tourism and mitigate negative effects at the source of the Nile such as; sensitization of locals about tourism, encouraging local and international investments, intensive marketing of tourist attractions.

The conclusion of this study is that there are both positive and negative socio-economic effects of tourism on households, positive effects trickle to households more than the negative ones and there are strategies that can be applied to sustain positive effects of tourism. Therefore tourism brings more development and growth through employment opportunities, infrastructural development, income generation and improved safety and security as the most received effects.