Factors affecting local community’s participation and willingness to invest in tourism development: A case study of Langkawi Island, Malaysia / Anaba Ifeoma Merith

Anaba Ifeoma , Merith (2022) Factors affecting local community’s participation and willingness to invest in tourism development: A case study of Langkawi Island, Malaysia / Anaba Ifeoma Merith. PhD thesis, Universiti Malaya.

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Abstract

Community participation and investment concepts are vital topics in achieving sustainable development. The development itself deals with humans, and hence the participation of the people in their environment is indispensable. This study investigates the constraining factors affecting local community’s willingness to invest in tourism small and medium enterprises (TSME) and their participation intention in tourism development in Malaysia with specific reference to Langkawi local community in the Northwestern part of Peninsular Malaysia. Tourism is an economic, social and cultural event that connects people, services and industries to various places. It also addresses some of the challenges encountered by local communities. Tourism can promote economic growth, reduce unemployment, and improve human and societal well-being. Community participation is of utmost importance in tourism development as it improves community members’ standard of living and their sense of belonging. This study examined the factors that affect communities’ participation intention and willingness to invest in the development of tourism. In order to achieve the objective of this study, quantitative methods were applied. The quantitative method was conducted based on a survey questionnaire. Grounded on a quantitative method, the primary data were composed with a structured questionnaire and subsequently analysed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and full-fledged Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). SPSS was used for data coding and analysing the statistics. The study roots its foundation in participatory theory and social identity theory and its proposed data is cross-sectional for all the objectives. The study revealed that there are predominant factors affecting the local community’ participation intention and investment in the tourism industry. Some of the factors identified are savings or capital (the most important problem for investment), knowledge, attitude, opportunity, the expectation of benefit and motivation. Most local communities lack capital involvement, which has a significant positive impact on the community’s participation and investment. This study found that attitude, motivation, knowledge, expectation of benefit, etc have positive significant impact on tourism participation and investment. It also indicated that social identity and motivation can play mediating role between participation intention on tourism development. Finally, this study also observed that specific policy to spur local community’s investment is inexistent. Therefore, this study suggests that government should create a policy specifically to inspire local community intention to participation and investment in the development of tourism.

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