Authors : Song-Heui Oh, Seung-Koo Lee and Jai-Woo Oh
Abstract: Tourism development based on natural resources such as mountain resources requires systematic development for minimizing environmental degradation and sustainability. For this, it is necessary to grasp the perceptions and attitudes of local stakeholders who are the target of tourism development and develop tourism accordingly. The survey was conducted from September 19, 2016 to October 14, 2016 and the subjects of the study were the residents of Taebaek City and the tourism experts directly involved in the development of Taebaek City mountain tourism. We conducted 60 questionnaires for tourism professionals including tourism officials. In addition, 450 questionnaires were collected and collected for local residents. Finally, 57 experts and 313 local residents were used for empirical analysis. The collected samples were analyzed by SPSS Ver. 22.0 were used for the comparative analysis, factor and reliability analysis, independent sample t-test. Among the tourism development effects, the average of experts in economic impact and cultural influence was higher than that of local residents. In preference tourism development type, it was found that there is a significant difference between types of environmental experience and type of natural scenery. Lastly, there was a significant difference in opinion on the support of tourism development among the local stakeholders. Both experts and local residents were found to have a positive attitude higher than 4.5 (7 point scale). Both experts and local residents can be interpreted as positive about mountain tourism development. However, there are some significant differences between experts and local residents. Especially, it was confirmed that there is a factor which shows difference of opinion between experts and local residents such as preferential tourism development type. Therefore in the future development of tourism, the opinions of local stakeholders on tourism development should be collected and conflicts should be prevented.
Song-Heui Oh, Seung-Koo Lee and Jai-Woo Oh, 2018. A Comparative Study on the Perception of Local Stakeholders Regarding the Development of Mountain Tourism in Gangwon Province. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 13: 3088-3091.