Community Leaders Perceptions toward Tourism Impacts and Level of Community Capacity Building in Tourism Development

Abstract

"This paper attempts to identify the relationship between the community leaders’ perceptions toward tourism impacts and their effort in building the capacity for tourism development in local communities of Shiraz, Iran. The paper is based on the study carried out among 175 communities’ leader. The analysis of data uses Pearson correlation to determine the relationship between variables involved. The findings reveal that two impacts (economic and environmental) have the most significant relationship with the level of community capacity building. The findings of the study imply that those leaders who perceived the tourism activities could bring economic benefits would have the higher tendency to be actively involved in building the capacity of their communities in relation to the development of tourism, whereas those who perceived tourism could bring negative impact to the environment, would put less effort in the capacity building."