Knowledge Management in Communities for Ecotourism Management in Palmpathana, Manang district, Satul Province

Abstract

This research studied about the community knowledge management on the ecotourism management in Palmpattana sub-district, Manang district, Satul Province.  The objective of this study was to investigate three aspects including: 1) the development of community-based ecotourism management, 2) the effectiveness and practicality of knowledge management in the community, 3) the difficulties and possible solutions in the community-based ecotourism management. The research populations were both tourists and local citizens in Palmpattana sub-district. The data were collected by using closed-ended questionnaires which were consequently distributed to 400 tourists and 100 local people from 10 villages. The collected data were statistically analysed to determine mean, standard deviation, frequency, percentage, t-test analysis, One-way ANOVA analysis and Linear Regression Analysis). The findings of this research are as follows. Firstly, the tourists were highly satisfied on the variety of ecotourism activities while the lowest satisfaction level was on the accessibility and convenience of travelling. Secondly, the knowledge management which people in the community mostly concerned were the application of sufficiency economy philosophy and the positive effects of ecotourism toward life quality development, respectively. Lastly,  problems and obstacles that affected the knowledge management in community-based ecotourism management were respectively as follows: 1) the local lacked of time to participate due to their principal occupation; 2) most of local people were not the community board; 3) there was inadequate information and training for ecotourism development of ecotourism; 4) the local citizen lacked of support to participate in management; and 5) there was inadequate knowledge and understanding in ecotourism. The hypothesis testing of this study revealed that difficulties and problems of community citizen positively influenced the levels of community knowledge management in ecotourism management with the statistical significance of 0.05