Local community involvement in rural tourism development: The case of Kastamonu, Turkey

              © PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural. ISSN 1695-7121
Vol. 10 Nº 2. Special Issue. Pp. 17-24. 2012
www.pasosonline.org
Local community involvement in rural tourism development:
The case of Kastamonu, Turkey
Bengi Ertuna i
Boğaziçi University (Turkey)
Gülşen Kırbaş ii
Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Association (Turkey)
i Boğaziçi University, Turkey, bengie@boun.edu.tr.
ii Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Association, gulsen.kirbas@gmail.com.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate the potential of local stakeholders in developing a
rural tourism product. With this aim, a traditional harvest day event was initiated by the researchers
and the event was organized and set up by the local stakeholders. Kastamonu, a rural destination in
Turkey with a great potential for but with very limited rural tourism development, was selected for
the conduct of this harvest day event. Participant observations and in-depth interviews are used to
identify the factors that facilitate involvement of the local community in rural tourism product deve-lopment.
The results are expected to provide insights for the development of a framework relating to
the assessment of the potential for sustainable rural tourism development in a given area.
Keywords: Sustainable tourism; Rural tourism; Local stakeholders; Resident attitudes; Kastamonu;
Turkey.
Título: Participación de la comunidad local en el desarrollo del turismo rural: el caso de Kastamonu,
Turquía
Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es investigar el potencial de los actores locales para el desa-rrollo
de un producto de turismo rural. Un evento tradicional del día de la cosecha fue iniciado por
los investi-gadores con este objetivo, y organizado por las partes interesadas de la localidad. Kasta-monu,
un destino rural de Turquía con gran potencial de desarrollo pero con limitado turismo rural,
fue seleccionado para llevar a cabo este evento del día de la cosecha. Se utilizaron la observación y
participación de los investigadores, además de entrevistas en profundidad para identifi car los factores
que facilitan la participación de la comunidad local en el desarrollo del producto turístico rural. Los
resultados esperan proporcionar información para el desarrollo de un marco de evaluación del poten-cial
de desarrollo sostenible del turismo rural en un área determinada.
Palabras clave: Turismo sostenible; Turismo rural; Partes interesadas locales; Actitudes de los resi-dentes;
Kastamonu; Turquía.
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Local community involvement in rural tourism development: ...
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Introduction
Rural tourism has attracted increased attention
from governments, non-governmental organiza-tions,
as a panacea of some of the pressing current
problems of rural communities. Changes in agricul-tural
technology and globalization have signifi cant-ly
changed the rural economic and social landscape.
Increased input costs combined with international
competition has decreased the income from tradi-tional
farming activities and supported diversifi -
cation into non-farming activities. Rural tourism,
which is a variant of eco-tourism, has emerged as
an important means of addressing the complex
socio-economic challenges of the rural communi-ties
following the decline of traditional agricultural
economy (Sharpley and Vass, 2006). Concurrently, a
number of factors has supported the generation of a
demand for rural tourism. An increased longing for
the countryside as a result of the pressures of mod-ern
urban life, a booming natural food market, and
a desire to conserve traditional rural life are among
the factors that supported the generation of this
demand. Consequently, rural tourism has become
an important component of the tourism industry in
many different countries, but it has exhibited differ-ent
forms in different contexts.
The development of the rural tourism activity
has also attracted the attention of scholars. The
defi nitions of rural tourism have proliferated to-gether
with the increased research interest on the
topic. Overtime, the scope of rural tourism has also
expanded. In spite of its multiple defi nitions and
expanded scope, a consensus seems to be achieved
on its objective as being sustainable. However,
scholarly work on the dimensions of and criteria for
sustainable tourism seems scarce (Saarinen, 2006).
Although rural tourism is implicitly assumed to be
a tool for sustainable development, there is some
evidence that it can also become a source of confl ict
in the society. Issues may arise over the control of
the natural capital and land use, the distribution of
income and profi ts from tourism among its stake-holders
and the potential displacement of local
communities. In fact, rural tourism has eventually
the potential to harm the environment and to have
adverse impacts on the local communities unless
carefully planned and managed (Cawley and Gill-mor,
2008). For this reason, the issue of sustainable
rural tourism development deserves more scholarly
attention and evidence from different parts of the
world, with different contextual characteristics.
This paper is part of a research which aims to
develop a framework for the assessment of the po-tential
for sustainable rural tourism development in
a given area. The purpose of this paper is to investi-gate
the factors that contribute to the involvement
of local stakeholders in developing a rural tourism
product. With this purpose, a traditional harvest
day event was initiated by the researchers and set
up by local stakeholders and community members.
The behavior of local stakeholders was observed
during the planning, organization and management
of this event and interviews were conducted with
participants of the event in order to identify their
attitudes towards rural tourism and to determine
the factors that facilitate the involvement of the lo-cal
community in rural tourism development. Par-ticipant
observations and interview results are ex-pected
to provide insights for the assessment of the
potential for sustainable tourism in a given area.
Literature on sustainable tourism develop-ment
Rural tourism utilizes a wide array of publicly
and privately owned resources, involves a broad
range of stakeholders and inherently includes the
potential for harming the natural, cultural and
social resources that it builds upon (Cawley and
Gillmor, 2008). Thus, the issues of sustainability
become important and attract increased attention
in the literature on rural tourism development. The
literature on sustainable rural tourism develop-ment
focuses on the appropriate policies and strate-gies
that would ensure the realization of the ben-efi
ts associated with rural tourism while limiting its
adverse impacts, especially on the natural environ-ment
and the local culture. It is built on the sustain-able
tourism development concept, which includes
different approaches with respect to the treatment
of different dimensions of sustainability. There are
approaches that concentrate either on a single, in-dividual
dimension of sustainability, such as envi-ronmental,
economic and social sustainability, or
on a combination of dimensions (Augustyn, 1998).
Studies that consider sustainability in a multidi-mensional
manner are recently increasing. These
studies advocate that the nature and complexity of
rural tourism necessitate the adoption of a holistic
approach that takes into account the diversity of the
resources utilized and the stakeholders involved.
Adopting a multidimensional approach to sus-tainability,
Augustyn (1998) uses the Action Strat-
Bengi Ertuna and Gülşen Kırbaş
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PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
egy for Sustainable Tourism Development model of
Inskeep (1991) in order to evaluate the rural tour-ism
development strategies in Poland. In this study,
he identifi es the following elements of rural tour-ism
strategy at the national level that will contrib-ute
to a multidimensional sustainability objective:
involvement of national authorities responsible for
environmental protection in strategy formulation;
identifi cation of tourism activities that preserve the
environmental and cultural heritage; support for lo-cal
levels of government to develop their own strate-gies
in line with the national strategy; inclusion of
tourism in land use planning; involvement of vari-ous
stakeholders and local communities in decision
making on rural tourism development; inclusion
of impact analysis; establishment of development
of environmental accounting systems, assessment,
monitoring and auditing schemes; inclusion of rep-resentatives
of indigenous people on rural tourism
advisory boards; and development of educational
and awareness programs.
Cawley and Gillmor (2008) contribute to the lit-erature
by developing a model of integrated rural
tourism development which takes into account all
the different types of the resources used and the
stakeholders involved, and apply this model to rural
tourism development in western Ireland over the
years 1992-2002. They use the concept of strategic
fi t from the strategic management literature in or-der
to assess the effectiveness of integrated tourism
in contributing to the local value added in terms of
all the social, cultural, environmental and economic
resources utilized. Their fi ndings outline the fea-tures
that contribute to the local value added. They
emphasize the need for a regional, multidimen-sional
sustainability strategy that is supported by
all the stakeholders of rural tourism. Additionally,
they suggest that the types of resources used and
their form of use should be in line with the strategy.
Appropriate resource use should be supported with
planning, management and control of the resource
use. Finally, networking between stakeholders that
is embedded in local systems is found to be instru-mental
for achieving sustainability and contribut-ing
to local development. Although their research
fi ndings outline the basic principles of integrated
rural tourism development, the issues relating to
implementation are left for future studies. How to
achieve broad stakeholder involvement in defi ning
the strategy for sustainability in a given area, how
to manage the resource use among different stake-holders
in a way to comply with the sustainability
strategy and how to promote networking among
stakeholders and embeddedness in local systems
are major issues that seem to be the major challeng-es
in promoting sustainability in tourism and con-tributing
to rural development. Methods that can be
used for achieving widespread participation in the
tourism development process need to be developed
(Reid et al., 2004).
In their study which aims to identify the factors
that lead to success in rural tourism development,
Wilson et al. (2001) claim that widespread partici-pation
and contribution of rural tourism entrepre-neurs
are critical for successful rural tourism devel-opment.
According to the focus group results on six
“successful” and “unsuccessful” communities in Illi-nois,
the most important factors for successful rural
tourism development are “a complete tourism pack-age,
good community leadership, support and par-ticipation
of local government, strategic planning,
coordination and cooperation between businessper-sons
and local leadership, coordination and coopera-tion
between for rural tourism entrepreneurs, infor-mation
and technical assistance for tourism devel-opment
and promotion, a good convention and visi-tor
bureaus and widespread community support for
tourism” (Wilson et al., 2001:134). The authors use
these results as support for the community-based
approach in rural tourism development; however,
they admit the diffi culty and the complexity of cre-ating
intercommunity cooperation and collaboration
and state the need for more research in these areas.
Active involvement and participation of resi-dents
in the tourism development process seem to
be prerequisites for achieving the goal of sustain-ability
and thereby improving the overall welfare in
the community. In this regard, residents’ attitudes
seem to be critical, but complex. Residents’ may
have divergent attitudes. In a study investigat-ing
the attitudes of residents’ to proposed tourism
development, Mason and Cheyne (2000) fi nd that
opinions and attitudes are not homogenous in the
communities. Their fi ndings provide evidence for
the complex nature of residents’ attitudes to tour-ism,
even in the pre-development stage when there
is little tourism activity in their community. As
time passes, their opinions and attitudes might also
change with the increase in the tourism activity.
Furthermore, community characteristics may also
infl uence residents’ attitudes. Using social exchange
theory and destination life cycle model, Latkova and
Vogt (2012) examine the impacts of the level of tour-ism
and economic development on the residents’ at-
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Local community involvement in rural tourism development: ...
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titudes toward tourism. They are not able to provide
strong evidence for the relationship between tour-ism
and economic development levels of the commu-nities
and residents’ attitudes. Based on their fi nd-ings
they suggest that historical and social factors
might be infl uential rather than development expe-riences
and stages and propose using other theories
that integrate these factors.
In summary, rural tourism, which involves a
wide range of community owned resources and
different stakeholders with different interest, is a
complex and intricate issue. In the literature, there
seems to be a consensus that rural tourism devel-opment
should be community based and involve a
multidimensional sustainability strategy which is
widely supported by all the stakeholders for ensur-ing
sustainability and rural development. However,
there is little evidence on how to achieve coopera-tion
and collaboration between and among different
stakeholders. The literature also points to the ne-cessity
of involvement of local community in deci-sion
making and planning of rural tourism develop-ment.
Although residents’ attitudes seem to be criti-cal
in achieving community involvement, the link
between residents’ attitudes and their participation
in tourism development appears to be vague. Ad-ditionally,
research on community problem solving
relating to tourism development is scarce. There-fore,
this paper aims to fi ll this void and identify
the factors that facilitate the involvement of local
stakeholders by observing their behavior during a
researcher-initiated tourism product development
event.
Context
Rural tourism development is in its initial stages
of development in Turkey (Karabati et al., 2009).
There is a widespread recognition of the need to
diversify the tourism product and develop alterna-tive
forms of tourism. Furthermore, massive migra-tion
from rural to urban areas, economic and social
changes in rural areas as a result of the signifi cant
decline in the share of agricultural output and em-ployment
in the total economy and inequality in
income distribution have generated an interest in
rural development. There seems to be a consensus
that rural tourism can be used as a tool to address
the complex problems of rural areas. Various gov-ernment
agencies in Turkey, such as the State Plan-ning
Organization, Ministry of Culture and Tour-ism,
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and
Ministry of Environment and Forestry, refer to ru-ral
tourism development among their priority aims
in the coming years. A number of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and private initiatives are
working to create recognition of ecological values
and to develop pilot projects. Various rural commu-nities
seem to be interested in adopting tourism as a
means for revitalizing their local economies. Howev-er,
these efforts seem to be uncoordinated and loose-ly
related to each other. Although rural tourism is
stated among major means for rural development, it
currently lacks a comprehensive strategy and an ac-tion
plan at the national level, which are supported
by the pertinent stakeholders. Over the last decade,
sporadic rural tourism projects are observed in dif-ferent
areas, some of which have not been able to
continue to the present.
In the “Turkish Tourism Strategy, 2023” (Min-istry
of Culture and Tourism, 2007), Kastamonu,
is one of the designated areas for rural tourism
development. The provinces of Kastamonu have
various natural attractions and the area includes
two national parks and is in the protection list of
World Wildlife Forum (WWF). The economic activ-ity
in the villages is forestry, small-scale agriculture
and livestock farming. It is a secluded area; thus
the traditional lifestyle and methods of production
have been mostly preserved in the villages. The
population growth rate in 2009 is negative due to
the decline in income from traditional agricultural
activities and resulting migration to big cities. Ac-cording
to the results of the Addressed Based Popu-lation
Registration System (Turkish Statistical In-stitute,
2010), the number of people which live in
the city of Istanbul but registered in Kastamonu is
524,596. According to the same source, the popu-lation
of Kastamonu is 361,222 people, of which
195,059 live in the province center and 166,163 live
in the rural area. The number of people living in
the rural area has decreased in 2010, from a fi gure
of 169,839 in 2009. There are a number of attempts
to develop rural tourism in the area, in the form of
eco-tourism and organic agri-tourism. Stakeholders
differ widely with respect to both the meaning and
the means to develop rural tourism. Existing and
potential rural tourism entrepreneurs, as well as lo-cal
communities, are not involved in the planning of
rural tourism development in the area.
Methodology
The literature indicates that involvement of ru-ral
communities in the design and implementation
of the tourism strategy is one of the critical factors
Bengi Ertuna and Gülşen Kırbaş
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PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
for achieving sustainable tourism development. Lo-cal
communities should be willing to develop their
own projects and cooperate with other stakeholders
for the development of rural tourism in a given area.
Methods of resource use planning, management and
control should be consistent with the existing social
structures. Therefore, assessment of the potential
of the local community in developing a rural tour-ism
product is one of the cornerstones of the gen-eral
assessment of the potential of a given area for
rural tourism development. However, communities
and their stakeholders differ widely with respect to
social, historical and economic attributes that infl u-ence
their attitudes toward a matter of social inter-est,
such as tourism development. Furthermore, the
link between attitudes and participation in tourism
development seems to be vague.
In order to investigate the factors that facilitate
local community involvement in tourism product
development, an event organization is undertaken
and the patterns of behavior of different stakehold-ers
are observed throughout the planning and im-plementation
of the event. Additionally, interviews
are conducted with the participants of the event in
order to identify their attitudes toward rural tour-ism
development in Kastamonu. A traditional har-vest
day event is selected and initiated by the re-searchers
as the tourism product to be developed.
The harvest day event is planned and organized by
the local stakeholders using traditional methods
and tools, such as threshing sledges. This event is
used in this study since it is complementary to lo-cal
economic activity, represents a revitalization of
a traditional method of production and involves en-dogenously
owned resources. Before initiating the
event, a fi eld trip was made to the area by the re-searchers
on July 9-11, 2010. In this trip, various
different channels were used in order to identify
villages that still use or that can generate a set-up
of a traditional harvest day. Planning and organiza-tion
of the event were left to local stakeholders and
another fi eld trip was made to the area in August
2010 with a small group of researchers in order to
participate in the harvest day event and to conduct
the interviews.
The organization of the harvest day included lo-cal
government representatives, local businessmen,
prominent local community leaders, village heads
(mukhtar) and the villagers of three villages. These
villages were previously identifi ed among the vil-lages
in which the residents continued to use tradi-tional
agriculture methods along with more modern
ones, had threshing sledges for harvesting and were
willing to participate in the event. These villages
are Eymür, Talipler and Gölcüğez. The harvest day
event took place in Eymür, which is 28 km. away
from the province center of Kastamonu. It has 23
households and its population is about 200 people.
These villages got electricity around the mid 1970s.
The fi rst tractors also arrived to these villages
around the same dates. The mukhtar of Eymür,
Hüseyin Mahmutoglu, bought his tractor in 1975
and used it also to pull the villagers to and from the
market in Kastamonu. They started using tractors
to pull the threshing sledges and gradually left the
use of oxen in the 1980s, following the liberalization
in the country. Talipler is a village which is 15 km
away from the province center of Kastamonu and
its population is about 180 people. There is a large
mansion in the village which dates back to the Ot-toman
period and is being developed as a hotel. The
original features of the mansion are preserved. Its
mukhtar, İrfan Pehlivanoğlu, is interested in devel-oping
the village as a tourism destination. Gölcüğez
is 40 km away from the province center of Kasta-monu
and it is about 150 people. There are fl int
mines in the village, which were the major source of
the stones used in threshing sledges until the 1980s,
when modern equipment replaced threshing sledg-es.
The mukhtar, Şemsettin Kaplan, is also inter-ested
in developing tourism as an alternative source
of income for the village. Local stakeholders and
the residents in these three villages participated in
the planning and organization of the harvest day
event, which took place in Eymür village on August
1, 2010. Interviews were conducted with the local
participants in the event both before and during the
event. A total of 60 participants were interviewed
using semi-structured questionnaires.
Findings
Prior to the fi rst fi eld trip, the event was intro-duced
to various stakeholders in Kastamonu in or-der
to identify different communities that have the
resources and the willingness to work through the
event. Representatives of the central and local go-vernment,
heads of villages (mukhtars) business-men,
prominent local community leaders, repre-sentatives
of related NGOs from Kastamonu were
identifi ed as stakeholders. Out of these stakehold-ers,
the offi cial ones were less effective in identi-fying
with local rural communities. On the other
hand, local businessmen and prominent commu-
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Local community involvement in rural tourism development: ...
ISSN 1695-7121
nity leaders were more willing to contribute to the
project and had more positive attitudes relating to
rural tourism development in the area. These two
groups were able to identify the right contacts in the
rural communities and to effectively utilize them.
Furthermore, they had a strong infl uence; the local
rural communities respected their ideas and read-ily
accepted their leadership in the initiation of the
project. These two groups were able to stimulate the
local communities in organizing the resources for
undertaking the event. Representatives of the cen-tral
government, senior offi cials of the local govern-ment,
representatives of NGOs working for rural
tourism development in the area and entrepreneurs
involved in organic tourism were the less effective
stakeholder groups in identifying potential rural
communities and stimulating them for undertaking
the rural tourism product development activity.
The interviews conducted with each of these
groups during the fi rst fi eld trip in the area reveal
a number of characteristics that relate to the effec-tive
stakeholder groups. Both of the groups share a
genuine interest in rural development in the area.
They are actively taking part and acting as lead-ers
in community projects in diverse areas, such as
health care, transportation and restoration of his-toric
buildings. Consequently, they have access to
different networks. They have signifi cant personal
investment in the area. They believe that tourism
can complement the economic activity and contrib-ute
to rural development in the region. They also
stress the importance of and the need for a multidi-mensional
approach to sustainability in rural tour-ism.
They share a concern and state that the bene-fi
ts of the tourism activity should accrue to the rural
community and its scale and form should be in line
with social, cultural and environmental sustain-ability.
On the other hand, the less effective stake-holder
groups do not have signifi cant personal in-vestments
in the area. Furthermore, they typically
concentrate on a single or a couple of dimensions of
sustainability in relation to rural tourism develop-ment.
Some of these ineffective stakeholders tend to
perceive rural tourism as building modern tourism
facilities and infrastructure in the rural area. These
common characteristics of the effective and the in-effective
stakeholder groups offer some guidelines
for the methodologies that can be developed for the
assessment of the potential of rural communities in
developing a rural tourism product. The fi ndings in-dicate
that the presence of local stakeholders with a
genuine interest in local development, a signifi cant
personal investment in the area and diverse net-working
channels seems to stimulate the rural com-munities
to participate in the rural tourism activity
and to facilitate their involvement in the planning,
organization and management of the resources in
the implementation stage.
A group of fi ve researchers participated in the
harvest day event organized in the village of Eymür
on August 1, 2010. The village was identifi ed and
contacted by a local businessman and a prominent
community leader and three villages participated in
the organization and management of the resources
for the event. The village headmen (mukhtars) of
these three villages were the key persons in setting
up the event and organizing the resources. The lo-cal
businessman, the prominent community leader
and the mukhtar of Talipler village also joined the
group of researchers. The event was carried out on
the harvest fl oor on the fi eld owned by a family in
the village. This family owned a traditional thresh-ing
sledge and two oxen which are used to pull the
sledge. Owning the oxen was critical for performing
the event in the traditional manner. The cut grain
was piled in a haystack on the harvest fl oor, then
the stack was pulled down with a long hooked wood-en
stick and scattered evenly on the fl oor by the
farmer and his sons. The wife of the farmer brought
the oxen and set up the sledge and started thresh-ing
the grain.
The threshing was the event of the day for the
village. There was a widespread participation by
the residents of the villages. At one point, a group
of young men from other villages drove up to the
harvest area in a truck and several women came in
and out to see and participate in the event. Children
of the village were encouraged to ride the thresh-ing
sledge by the older folk who wanted them to
see how it had been in the old days. Lunch and re-freshments
were organized by the mukhtar. The lo-cal
people were very enthusiastic to interact with
the group of researchers and show them all the re-sources
that they thought would be of interest to
the outside group. Although the wind was not good
enough, they also showed winnowing. The mukhtar
demonstrated the use of wooden winnowing forks
and explained how it was necessary to turn it at the
top of the throw, spreading the grain for the breeze
to work. They also made a demonstration using the
mechanical thresher in the adjacent fi eld.
The interviews conducted with the local com-munity
members participating in the harvest day
event were coded with respect to their attitude to-
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ISSN 1695-7121
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PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
ward rural tourism development in their area and
their willingness and ability to contribute to its
planning and organization. The results indicate an
overall positive attitude toward rural tourism de-velopment
in their village. Participants also stated
that they would be interested in working through
similar projects that could lead to development of
rural tourism products with commercial value. Most
of the participants complained about the decrease in
agricultural output and incomes and stated tourism
development can solve problems. A number of par-ticipants
hoped that rural tourism can contribute to
the preservation of the local landscape. They also
stated that rural tourism can create employment
opportunities. Some also mentioned that develop-ment
of rural tourism would give them a chance
to preserve the social fabric in the country side as
youngsters who went to work in the big cities would
return back.
On the other hand, there was a consensus on the
fact that they lacked the entrepreneurial skills and
the means to start their own ventures or develop
tourism related products. Some admitted that they
did not know what would be of interest to tourists.
A woman made a remark after the event that “we
wouldn’t throw away our threshing sledges if we
knew that tourists would be interested in seeing
them”. A number of respondents mentioned other
activities and attractions that could be built into the
rural tourism product, such as riding horses, weav-ing
baskets, making of small agricultural equipment
and tools. Women seemed to be more willing to work
in rural tourism development projects. However,
they repeatedly arrived at the conclusion that they
needed leaders who would guide them through the
stages of tourism development. They also stressed
the importance of seeing examples that would dem-onstrate
how to proceed with rural tourism develop-ment.
With respect to their experiences relating to the
event, they said they enjoyed the event themselves
and interacting with the outsiders. They worked un-der
the leadership of the mukhtars. Mukhtars iden-tifi
ed the resources used in the event and they used
their relatives in order to identify them. They com-municated
solely through cell phones. Mukhtars co-ordinated
the event and actually worked through all
the stages of it along with the other participants. All
the tree mukhtars stated that they could coordinate
home-stays and any other farm activities in their
villages. Participant observations both before and
during the event indicate that the rural community
members are enthusiastic about rural tourism de-velopment,
they cooperate with other communities
and successfully work together in the development
of a local tourism product under the coordination of
the mukhtars. Additionally, local businessmen and
prominent community leaders seem to facilitate the
involvement of mukhtars in these events. In this
study, a genuine interest on rural development in
the area and a preference for a multidimensional
approach to sustainability were among the common
characteristics of these two groups of stakeholders
who facilitated the involvement of the local commu-nity
in the production of a rural tourism product, a
set-up harvest day event in this case.
Conclusions
This paper is part of a research that aims to de-velop
a framework for the assessment of the poten-tial
for sustainable rural tourism development in a
given area. Rural tourism, which involves a wide
range of community owned resources and different
stakeholders with different interests, is a complex
and intricate issue. The literature on sustainable
tourism development indicates that community
based approaches are more effective in ensuring
sustainability and rural development. However,
research on how to achieve broad stakeholder and
community involvement in the planning, organiza-tion
and implementation seems to be scarce. This
study aims to contribute to the literature by identi-fying
the factors that facilitate the participation of
local stakeholders and community members in ru-ral
tourism product development. Willingness and
the ability of the local stakeholders and community
members to participate in the tourism product de-velopment
were investigated by initiating a set-up
event that would be carried out by the local stake-holders.
The fi ndings indicate that the presence of
local stakeholders with a genuine interest in local
development, a signifi cant personal investment in
the area and diverse networking channels seems
to stimulate the rural communities to participate
in the rural tourism activity and to facilitate their
involvement in the planning, organization and man-agement
of the resources in the implementation
stage. These local stakeholders operate through lo-cal
community leaders, in this case the mukhtars,
which create cooperation and collaboration within
the community.
The results of this study are expected to provide
insights for developing frameworks relating to the
24
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 10(2). Special Issue. 2012
Local community involvement in rural tourism development: ...
ISSN 1695-7121
assessment of the potential for sustainable tourism
in a given area. Assessment of the potential of the
local community members to participate in rural
tourism development is an important component of
the overall sustainability of a given area. However,
further studies are needed to determine the factors
facilitating cooperation and collaboration between
local rural communities and other stakeholders of
rural tourism. The factors that facilitate local com-munity
involvement appear to be contextual, but
this study proposes a method that can be used to as-sess
these factors in a given context. Identifi cation
of effective stakeholders and their common charac-teristics
may help the policy makers in rural tour-ism
development.
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Recibido: 15/02/2011
Reenviado: 30/09/2011
Aceptado: 31/10/2011
Sometido a evaluación por pares anónimos