The main purpose of this study is to explore the perception of Bishoftu town residents about the impacts of urban tourism. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed to achieve the objective of this study. Random sampling procedure was used for selection of respondents from the residents. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze data. The result of factor analysis showed that three factors named economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts explained 53.24% of variation in the perceptions of residents. However, most of the local residents and stakeholders were unaware of negative impact of urban tourism. MANOVA analysis indicated that, there was no significant difference between the mean of underlying dimensions of the perceived urban tourism impacts, and socio-demographic characteristics. The concerned bodies and officials should take the issues into account while planning and devising various measures.
Tourism is widely perceived as an economic development tool for the local community, providing factors that may improve quality of life such as employment and investments opportunities, tax revenues, accommodation services, natural and cultural attractions, festivals and outdoor recreation opportunities (Brida et al., 2014). Thus, the participation and support of local residents is imperative for the sustainability of the tourism industry at any destination (Gursoy et al., 2010). However, although the increase of tourism offers many positives, it can also be the cause of a lot of problems in the local societies. It has been accused for negative environmental impacts, for increase of land’s value, for being a threat of alteration of the local traditional culture, for undesirable changes in the family values, for the increase of criminality, pollution and traffic congestion and for uncontrolled building (Dimitriadis et al., 2013).
Tourism can have both positive and negative outcomes and that residents’ support is essential for sustainable tourism growth (Chen, 2001; Ramchander, 2004;
Andriotis, 2005; Kuvan and Akan, 2005). Because the positive attitude of residents is very important to create a hospitable and attractive environment for visitor satisfaction and repeat visitation, determining local residents’ perception of tourism development and its impacts plays a vital role in the future success of a destination. Many studies conducted so far on residents’ attitudes toward and perceptions of urban tourism and its impacts have revealed that these aspects are predominantly explained using the social exchange theory (Andriotis and Vaughan, 2003; McGehee and Andereck, 2004).
Recently, tourism scholars have begun to focus on the specific factors influencing residents’ attitudes towards tourism impacts. These factors were divided into internal and external factors that influenced attitude towards tourism (Sharpley, 2014). The external factors included levels of tourism development (Lepp, 2008), tourist types and seasonality (Sharpley, 2014). The internal factors focused on the demographic characteristics of the residents (age, gender, length of residence, economic dependency and level of education), which are considered as significant factors that shape their attitudes and perceptions towards tourism development and its impact (Tosun, 2002).
Tourism takes form on the basis of tourist attraction existence and nowadays one of the most attractive places is city. On the other hand by reason of having good facilities and services, cities are the first destination of many tourists (Estelaji et al., 2012). Urban tourism is “the trips taken by travelers to urban areas places of high population density. One of the unique features of urban tourism is that attractions are distributed densely in the urban areas (Edward et al., 2008).
Ethiopia is one of the developing countries in Africa that is endowed with various and immense tourist attraction sites. Those heritages that reflect the culture and history of the country include music, dance, literature, handicrafts, museums, paintings, churches, mosques and any other places of worship (Tofik, 2012; Yiheyis, 2015). These heritages resources and others play a paramount role in the development of the country through tourism industry. The socio cultural, economic and environmental impacts directly or indirectly influence the tourist attraction sites such as Bishoftulakes,Dinsho Park, Sofumar Cave, Gonder castle, Axum Obelisk, Lalibela, Rock Hewn Churches, Dirre Sheik Hussein and so on.
Bishoftu is one of the tourist attraction sites in Ethiopia’ National and international tourists visit it every year. The reason for tourists to visit the area is to enjoy the heritages, natural beauty of the areas, art gallery and the public holiday called 'Irreecha'. International tourists also visit it in all seasons and tour operators mainly organize their visits. These tourists create income for the country in general and Bishoftu town in particular. Hiwot (2013) and Fenet (2015) conducted a study relating to tourism in Bishoftu, without considering the detail perception of urban residents' toward urban tourism impacts. The site selected, Bishoftu town, is therefore, despite its rich historical, cultural and natural heritages, the town lacks adequate, in-depth, inclusive and professional researches on perception of urban tourism impacts and its development. The major reason for studying urban residents' perception is to understand how these perceptions will affect the tourism development and how planning may best be proceed. Therefore, to better understand the benefits and costs derived from tourism development, various studies have centered on the issues related to residents’ perceived impacts of tourism (Williams et al., 1995). The above studies suggested that the distinguishing of residents’ perception on the impacts of tourism is to overcome a lack of understanding of development impacts for successful tourism planning indeed, the determinants affect residents’ perceptions of tourism development (Uysal et al., 1992). In general, in Ethiopia only few studies are centered on urban residents’ perception on tourism impacts using descriptive data analysis method. However, on this study, different methods of data analysis such as Cronbach alpha coefficient, factor analysis and multiple analysis of variances were employed. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to explore the perception of Bishoftu town residents on the economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism.
Conceptual framework of the study
The conceptual framework of this study is clearly depicted in Figure 1. The residents’ socio-demographic characteristics, their perceptions of positive and negative tourism impacts, and their overall evaluation of tourism impacts determine their support for tourism development and hence contribute for town development is vividly sited in the frame work. It is proposed that the social exchange theory establishes the underlying theoretical perspective for this study.
Description of study area
Bishoftu town is one of the so-called rail way towns of Ethiopia established following the construction of Ethio-Djibouti railway in 1917. Bishoftu is located at 47 km from capital city of the country South-East of Finfinne main asphalt road and 52 km from capital city of East Shewa zone Adama (http://www.mwud.gov.et/web/bishoftu/home) (Figure 2).
Like other Ethiopia’s attraction sites Bishoftu Town can be visited at any time of the year. Its tourist attractions are characterized by a cluster of volcanic crater lakes and popular spiritual sites that are found in and around the town. The town is surrounded by eight crater lakes namely: HoraArsadi, Babogaya, Bishoftu, Kuriftu, Chalalaka, Kilole, Green and Balbala Lake (Figure 3). Most of them are well developed with lodges, resorts and spas all are becoming tourist attractions. Endemic birds and plants, chain of mountains are also a good tourist attraction site of the city. Bishoftu is rich with potential resources, thus locals have to be involved in diversifying tourism product of the area. For example, hiking, sailing, fishing sport, trekking, agro tourism, Bird watching etc. are some of tourism products of the town (Fenet, 2015).
In addition to the above mentioned tourism resources, there is also one small museum with collection of both historical and cultural heritages that shows the development of traditional Oromo cultures. GedaTulema Office, Cultural Hall, LemaGuya African Art Gallery, Bishoftu Automotive Industry and ancient human bone which has not split out for 113 years called Aba Sala Mariam, Hailesillassie Palace and Bishoftu Cultural Museum are found in Bishoftu. All these attraction sites made the city invaluable for tourism and have a great ability to attract tourists. Not only this, Bishoftu is also endowed by boasts of being Oromo ritual center where millions of people converge at the Oromo thanks giving ceremony called Ireecha, which is celebrated annually on the banks of Lake HoraArsadi. There are different kinds of Irreecha in Oromia, but the famous ones are Irecha Tulu and IrechaMelka(Hiwot, 2013) (Figure 4).
Selection of the study area
Due to the above mentioned tourism resources, the town was selected, as it provides an ideal example to investigate the awareness level and perception of residents' towards the impact of urban tourism.
Research design
The nature of this research is descriptive design, which was used to generate the required information. This design gives a description of variables based on field generated data and literature reviews. According to Burns (2000), an exploratory design allows the researcher to make a comprehensive inference about the investigated variables in the target population. It also allows an analysis of results with a view of generating new ideas about phenomena like attitudes and perceptions of local community towards impacts of urban tourism and its development. In line with this, both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed to illustrate the objectives of the study and to gather relevant data. For the overall research design (Figure 5).
Sample and sampling procedures
Due to a limited financial budget and time constraints, the study was conducted on a limited and manageable size. The researcher categorized the sample population in to local communities of the city and key tourism stakeholders. The study employed different sampling procedures for the local communities and key tourism stakeholders. In order to make the perception of residents' more representative; random sampling technique was employed to select the required total 400 respondents from the nine kebeles and close ended questionnaires were distributed and analyzed by quantitative research method. The sampled population of each kebele is presented in Table 1.
According to Bishoftu city administration (2009 Ethiopian Calendar), the estimated population of Bishoftu is 207,050 and it is divided into nine urban and five rural kebeles. Of the total population, 164, 311 people live in the urban kebeles and the rest lived in rural kebeles. Therefore, in determining the representative sample size of the households, the researcher used 95% confidence (p=0.05) of samples. Singh and Masuku (2014) provide a simplified formula to calculate sample sizes. This formula will be: n = N/[1+N(e)2], Where n is the sample size, N is the population size, and e is the level of precision or confidence interval (0.05). Thus, according to the formula the sample size is 400 residents of the city.
Using purposive sampling, this work also examined the perception of 20 tourism stakeholders of Bishoftu city culture and tourism office workers, Municipal office workers, lodge and resort owners, tour guides and travel agents. The open ended questionnaire was used to analyze the response and interprets qualitatively.
Data collection instruments
The necessary data for this study were obtained from primary sources as well as secondary source. Thus, both primary (observation, questionnaire survey and interview) and secondary data were collected.
Validity and reliability
To check the validity and reliability of questionnaire, a pilot test using 20 respondents was conducted and the result of Cronbach Alpha coefficient 0.806 higher than 0.7, which showed that research tool, was reliable. Then 400 structured questionnaires were distributed to the residents categorized into three parts. The first part of the questionnaire deals about resident’s general socio-demographic characteristics, the second part comprised the urban tourism impact questions that were helped to measure the perception of Bishoftu town residents and the third part contains the perception of residents on tourism development.
Method of data analysis
The qualitative data which athered through interview, personal observation and secondary data review were narrated. The quantitative data were analyzed with the help of Package for Social Science (SPSS version 20.). The methods of data analysis for quantitative data were: Cronbachsalpha, factor analysis, Multiple Analysis of variance and correspondence analysis.
Characteristics of respondents
The sample population for this study was residents, who lived in Bishoftu town. A total of 400 surveys questionnaires were distributed to current residents randomly selected from the 9 kebeles’ in the town. Out of 400 questionnaires dispensed, six (1.3%) were rejected due to incomplete addresses. From a total of the distributed questionnaires 394 were analyzed in this study. Table 2 shows the demographic characteristics of the residents’ from Bishoftu town that comprises the study sample. Among the selected three hundred ninety four sample respondents from town residents 267 (67.8%) of them were males respondents whereas 126 (32%) were females. As it can be seen in the indicated table, the sample comprises primarily young people (over 49% of the respondents were aged between 21 and 30 years, and more than 40% of respondents were aged between 31-40 years, while less than 5% were aged Above 51 years.
Table 3 shows the social characteristics of the residents’ from Bishoftu town that comprises the study sample. According to this table, most of the respondents were employed, and university graduates; although a significant percentage of the respondents (31.2%) have Diploma, while around 2.5% of respondents have the educational level of MA / MSc and above. In addition, the habitual residents about 31% have been living in the town for less than 5 years and about 30.5% of respondents were lived in Bishoftu for 5-10 years. 9.1 and 12.7% respondents lived in Bishoftu town for 16-20 and more than 20 years, respectively.
Table 4 shows the economic characteristics of the residents from Bishoftu town that comprises the study sample. As can be seen in this table, the majority of respondents (47.7%) earn a monthly income of 1000 to 5,000 Ethiopian birr, while 2.3% of the respondents earn a monthly income of above 10,000 birr. The sample also includes a large number of students and salaried employees.
Benefits of tourism and public attachment
Source of information
Question: What are the main source of knowledge regarding tourism impacts and tourism development? Figure 6 results revealed that more than half of the respondents (50.53%) obtain knowledge regarding tourism from mass media whereas a significant numbers of respondents get knowledge through personal observation (23.81%) and from education (22.75%) respectively. On the other hand a few percentages of respondents (2.91%) get knowledge concerning tourism from any other source like reading booklets and different newspapers. Even though the respondents know the tourist attraction areas of Bishoftu, the result signifies that most of the respondents got knowledge regarding tourism from mass media, whereas a significant number of respondents got tourism knowledge by personal observation.
Attachments to tourism and contacts of people to tourists
Question: Are you frequently in contact with tourists? According to Table 5, most of the local community residents (65%) do not have a chance frequently to contact tourists of Bishoftu town, whereas 33.2% of respondents have a chance to meet tourists in their daily life.
Question: What is residents’ level of attachment to tourism? As shown in Figure 7, the majority of residents’ (42.18%) in Bishoftu town that attached to tourism were less as compared to the residents’ who had a strong attachment (30.45%) to tourism, whereas around 27% of local community do not have any attachment to tourism in Bishoftu town.
Benefits of tourism
Figure 8 indicated that most of respondents (64.21%) agree that the benefit of tourism is greater than its disadvantage, whereas 31.98% of local community respondents disagree with the advantage of tourism exceed its disadvantage. All of the key tourism stake holders agree that urban tourism is beneficial to local communities to create work opportunity for locals, develop growth domestic product, conserve natural resources, generate income, promote cultural exchange, technology transfer and selling local products.
Local communities’ perception of the urban tourism impacts
Economic impacts
The perception of Bishoftu town residents towards positive and negative tourism economic impact is described in Table 6. The descriptive analysis of respondents' perceived economic impacts of urban tourism are presented in Table 4. The overall mean (M), standard deviation (SD) and percentage for each assessment item are explained. Respondents rated the items on a five point Likert scale with 1 = Strongly disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Moderate, 4 = Agree, and 5 = Strongly agree.
The 13 questions that assess residents’ perceived impacts of urban tourism were related to economic impacts. According to Table 6, 73.1% of the local community respondents strongly agreed and agreed that urban tourism brings a positive economic impact to the country and 14.2% of respondents do not believe that tourism brings a positive economic impact; 10.2% of the local community was not aware about the positive economic impacts. This showed that there were a significant number of local communities who had no any hint about the positive economic effect of urban tourism. In addition, the mean result (M=3.87) showed that respondents perceived urban tourism as it brings positive impact on Bishoftu’s economy. As per the data obtained from Bishoftu Town Culture and Tourism office, there is a steady increment of income that is obtained from tourism. This idea is clearly supported by Table 6.
As one can understand from Table 7, while the income obtained from 2005 to 2008 showed a steady increment, the income obtained in 2009 shows that it is highly decreased. As the tourism office expert described, the main reason for such reduction of income was the event of conflict during Irreecha ritual ceremony. This is because the number of tourist flow during 2009 Ethiopian Calendar decreased due to political instability of the country.
85% of local respondents were familiar with the fact that tourism attracted more investment to Bishoftu town whereas 7.9% reflected their doubt on tourism attracts more investment and insignificant numbers of respondents (5.3%) do not have knowledge regarding the statement. Besides the mean result (M=4.23) revealed that the respondents agreed with investment attraction to the town due to tourism development. It is found that, currently investors are coming to Bishoftu town and construct resorts, lodges, hotels and pensions, said the head office of culture and tourism of the town.
71.5% of local community respondents strongly agreed or agreed that tourism attracts more spending to Bishoftu town, respectively, whereas 13.5% of respondents disagree with the statement. Moreover the mean result (M=3.95) indicated that the majority of the local communities agreed with the statement. As can be demonstrated in Table 7, 70.1% of local community respondents strongly agreed or agreed that tourism revenue increases living standards of the community. In addition, the mean result (M=3.87) revealed that, living standards of Bishoftu town community increase more rapidly because of the tourism revenues. 60.1% of respondents agreed that tourism causes an increase in price of land and cost of living. On the other hand, 26.9% of local communities believe that tourism does not cause increment on price of land and cost of living. Moreover the mean result (M=3.53) majority of local communities agreed with the above statement and 10.9% of local communities were not aware about this statement.
About 79.7% of local communities strongly agreed and agreed that tourism creates new markets for local products. On the other hand, 9.2% of respondents disagreed with the statement “tourism creates new markets for local products”. Moreover the mean result (M=4.15) shows that the majority of local communities agreed with the statement. Furthermore, similar ideas were raised by, tourism expert of Bishoftu town, kebele administrators, the town’s old known elders, hotel managers of Babogaya, Liezak and Kuriftu Resorts as well as Lema art Gallery workers. They all strongly, agreed that tourism helps the community through selling local art products; cultural clothes, handcrafts and etc of the community for the tourists. In other words, it creates market opportunities for the local residents.
Besides, 84% of local community’s respondents agreed that tourism is good for community’s economic development. Only 7.4% of the local communities disagreed or strongly disagreed that tourism does not benefit the local people by creating economic activities. Moreover the mean result (M=4.22) showed that most of the respondents agreed with the statement. These results are consistent with Doxey’sIrridex model, which suggested that residents usually hold a relatively positive attitude towards tourism as tourism is introduced to host community.
As it can be seen on the Table 7, 58.1% of respondents agreed and strongly agreed on that tourism only seasonally increases job opportunities and 15.7% of respondents do not have a clue on labor opportunities increased due to more tourism, whereas 23.1% of respondents did not agree with the statement. Likewise the mean result (M=3.53) revealed that most of respondents agree with the statement. This idea is also confirmed by the interviewee of Bishoftu town culture and tourism head. She stated that tourism creates job opportunities in various areas. For instance, the head said that tour guides, increased the number of shades from one to three. Not only this they also bought cars and also create job opportunities for other local communities. On the other hand, Liesak resort manager and Bin hotel respondent signifies that jobs related to tourism were seasonal.
Of the respondents, 43.2% of local communities agreed that tourism is beneficial for a small group of people (M=3.13) and 36.3% of respondents disagreed with the statement, whereas 15.5% of local communities are not aware with the statement.69.6% of local community respondents agreed or strongly agreed that tourism improves public utilities in Bishoftu town and 17% of respondents disagreed with the statement. Moreover, the mean result (M=3.81) showed that the majority of respondents agreed the statement “tourism improves public utilities in town”. In addition, 60.8% of local community respondents agreed or strongly agreed on quality of services in the Bishoftu town is better due to more tourism; whereas 22.9% of respondents disagreed with the statement. Furthermore, the mean result (M=3.60) showed that most of the respondents agreed with the statement.
Finally, as shown in the Table 7, 62.2% of local community respondents agreed that transportation is better in the town due to more tourism, whereas, 22% of local community respondents disagreed with the statement; 12.9% hesitated to say transportation is improved in Bishoftu town due to tourism. Likewise, the mean result (M=3.62) indicated that most of the respondents agreed with the statement.
Generally, the result obtained from Table 7 indicates that majority of local communities are aware of the positive economic impacts of urban tourism and they know few negative impacts. Moreover, the positive economic impact of tourism is well addressed by key tourism stake holders, but its negative impacts were not well known.
Environmental impacts
The perception of Bishoftu town residents towards positive and negative tourism environmental impacts is described in Table 8. As can be seen from the table, 62.5% of local community respondents agreed that tourism causes more positive environmental effects than negative and 21.3 of them do not believe positive environmental effects of tourism is greater than negative. Moreover the mean result (M = 3.55) indicates that, most of the respondents agree with the above statement. According to this table, 41.1% of respondents agreed that Bishoftu community is becoming overcrowded due to the increasing number of tourists and 36.1%of respondents disagreed with the statement; whereas 20.3% of respondents were not aware about the statement. Furthermore the mean result (M = 3.01) signifies that the local communities were not aware of the statement (Table 8). The mean result (M= 2.80) showed that most of the local respondents were unaware of the statement “tourism increases the urban pollution including noise, water pollution and waste pollution”. The researcher observed that the lakes around resorts are polluted to some extent. The banks of some lakes were contaminated with un-decomposed materials like use and throw plastics materials.
According to Table 8, 35 and 38.1% of local respondents agreed and strongly agreed that urban tourism provides an incentive for the conservation of natural resources, respectively and 12.7% were unaware of the statement; 10.9% of respondents disagreed with the statement. The mean result (M = 3.98) also signifies that local communities agreed with the statement that tourism provides an incentive for the conservation of natural resources. Respondents from Babogaya resort, Adulala resort and Paradise lodge also confirmed that tourism helps to protect, maintain and conserve nature, such as lakes, plants, animals, forests etc.
55.4% of local community respondents agreed that tourism increases the traffic congestion in the city and 17.0% of respondents were unaware of the statement; whereas 24.8% of respondents did not agree with the statement. In addition the mean result (3.43) showed that local communities hesitated over the statement “tourism increases the traffic congestion”. In addition, 45.9% of local community respondents agreed that tourism transformed the city in an overcrowded urban territory and 18.5% of the respondents are unaware that tourism converts Bishoftu town into an overcrowded territory. On the other hand, 32.5% disagree with the above statement. Likewise the mean result (3.20) indicates that respondents of local community are ambivalent that tourism transforms city in to overcrowded urban territory.
Table 8 also revealed that 36.8 and 36.5% of local community respondents agree and strongly agree that roads and public infrastructure are kept in higher standard than otherwise due to tourism expansion, respectively. On the other hand 15% disagree with the above statement. In addition, the mean result (3.88) indicated that majority of the respondents agree with the statement. The same response has been given from administration office that, due to tourism activities different infrastructural activities such as the construction of roads, electricity and hotels were developed.
51.3% of the local community respondents agreed that tourism development is responsible for the water sanity and on the other hand 37% disagreed with the statement. Moreover the mean result (3.23) revealed that the majority of the local communities are unaware of tourism development role for water sanity.
Finally, the interviewee from tourism office and the town administration experts said that most of the constructions undergone in the town are not as such attractive. This is because of the lack of coordination between the tourism office and town administration. In addition, the BishoftuAfaf hotel manager signifies that locals meaning farmers are being displaced from their land due to more tourism. This is because as tourism develops, the town is more expanded.
To summarize, the descriptive result obtained from Table 8 indicates that Bishoftu town residents have positive perception of the environmental impacts of urban tourism and they are unaware of the negative environmental impacts of tourism.
Socio - cultural impacts
The perception of Bishoftu town residents towards positive and negative tourism socio-cultural impacts is described in Table 9. According to this table, 69.6% of local community respondents agreed that urban tourism has led to an increase in service for residents, whereas 15.2% of respondents strongly disagreed and disagree with the statement. Moreover the mean value (M=3.85) indicated that most of them agree with the idea tourism leads to an increase in service for residents. 36% of local community respondents agreed that tourism causes a lower quality of life and in contrast 48% disagree with the statement.
This indicated that due to tourism the quality of life of residents increase. In addition, the mean result (M=2.80) indicates that most of the respondents were unaware of the statement. 48% agreed that tourism causes security and crime problems such as prostitution and drug trafficking and in contrast 32.7% disagreed with the statement. The mean average (M=3.25) shows that the respondents were unaware that tourism causes security and crime problems such as prostitution and drug trafficking. Furthermore, one tour guide said that around Babogaya there were some tourists who use ‘Shisha’ and harass local females. In addition, as a negative tourism impact of socio-culture, Kuriftu resort, View point lodge and Tommy Hotel workers revealed that, bad cultures such as homosexuality (a person usually a man who is attracted to people of the same sex) and locals imitation of bad foreign culture is expanded by forgetting indigenous culture.
62.6% of local community respondents agree that tourism brings more positive social effects than negative; 21.3% strongly disagree and disagree with the statement and a significant number, 10.2% are unaware of whether the positive social effect exceeds its negative effect. In addition, the average mean result (M=3.65) revealed that most of the respondents believe that tourism brings more positive social effects.
36 and 43.4% of local respondents agree and strongly agree that tourism helps the inheritance of culture and gives better knowledge of our own traditional culture, respectively and a significant number of respondents were unaware of the statement; whereas only 8.6% disagreed with the statement “tourism promotes cultural exchange”. The average mean result (M=4.15)shows that most of the local residents respondents strongly agreed and agreed with the above statement. Most of the key tourism stakeholders stated that tourism helps the locals to promote cultural exchanges. In addition, Asham Africa waitress specified that tourism helps to know foreign culture and share our own culture to attract more tourists and make our town well known to the world.30.7 and 40.6% of the respondents agree and strongly agree with the statement “Due to tourism, old customs have rejuvenated ”respectively; whereas 13% of respondents disagreed that tourism has not contributed to revive old customs, and significant number of respondents, 10.2% do not have a clue on whether tourism revives old custom or not. In addition, the mean result (M=4.01)signifies that most of the respondents believe that due to tourism old customs can be regenerated.
34.8 and 41.1% of the respondents agree and strongly agree that tourism influences the evolution of local arts, respectively; whereas, 9.9% of respondents disagreed with the statement, and significant number of respondents, 7.9% do not know whether tourism influences the evolution of local arts. Furthermore, the mean result (M=4.11) shows that most of the local community respondents believe that tourism influences the evolution of local arts.
35 and 41.4% of respondents agree and strongly agree that tourism commercializes the local traditions, whereas 7.8% disagree and strongly disagree with the statement, and a significant number of respondents (10.9%) do not know whether tourism commercializes local tradition. More over the mean result (M=4.12) implies that most of the local communities agreed with the statement.
36 and 38.8% of respondents agreed and strongly agreed that tourism promotes better understanding between people; whereas 10.1% of respondents disagreed that due to tourism understanding between people is improved, and 10.4% were unaware of the statement. Besides, the mean result (M=4.05) indicates that most of the respondents agreed with the statement ‘understanding between people is promoted due to tourism’. Moreover, the pyramid hotel waitress and Tommy hotel manager described that tourism helps people to work together and lead their social life well.
55.3% of the respondents agreed that tourism creates more occupational opportunities for women than men; whereas 28.3% strongly disagree and disagree that occupational opportunities created due to tourism are higher for women than men, and 13.2% were unaware of occupational opportunities created by tourism. The mean result (M=3.48) indicates that most of the respondents believed that occupational opportunities are created more for women than men.
To summarize, the findings indicate that Bishoftu town residents have a positive perception of the socio-cultural impacts of tourism. Yet, they are unaware of the perception on the statement ‘tourism causes security and crime problems such as prostitution and drug trafficking and occupational opportunities created for women’. On the other hand, most of the key stakeholders were familiar with both positive and negative socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism.
Underlying dimension of perceived urban tourism impacts
Factor analysis was used for the purpose of identifying the underlying dimensions of residents’ perceptions toward economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism. The utilization of the “Principal Component Analysis” with the varimax rotation contained 31 perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism items. Based on the purposes of this study, the research question “Are there different underlying factors that explain urban residents’ perception?”
First of all, in order to decide the appropriateness of factor analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO)' measure of sampling adequacy and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity were employed (Golzardi et al., 2012). In this study, the results of the KMO measure of sampling adequacy revealed .839, which is sufficient for further analysis. Bartlett's Test of Sphericity revealed a significance at a level of .000 (χ2 = 1514.256, df = 120). Thus, the variables must be related to each other for the factor analysis to be appropriate.
In order to examine underlying dimensions of the perceived urban tourism impacts, a factor analysis with a varimax rotation was performed and the results are given in Table 10.
The three dimensions were considered as the dependent variables in this study, and they were named: economic effects, environmental and economic effects and socio-cultural effects. A total of 15 items were dropped from further analyses because some items were not interpretable for having only two items loaded in one factor and others were dropped for having low coefficient scores. After the elimination of the 15 items, factor analysis was run again and the final factorial model was constituted by 3 distinctive factors which were related with the perceptions of Bishoftu town residents. Then, reliability analysis using Cronbach’s Alpha (α) was conducted to check the internal consistency of the items within each of the three factor structures. Cronbach’s alpha should be more than 0.7 so as to be characterized a construct reliable (Dimitriadis et al., 2013).
The first underlying dimension contained six items with an alpha = 0.801. The second underlying dimension contained six items with an alpha = .745. The third underlying dimension contained four items with an alpha = .743. From the results, we can conclude that three factors were reliable. These three factors explained 53.24% of the variance in perception of urban tourism impacts. The factors extractable from the analysis along with their Eigen values, the percent of variance of the factor and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient were given in Table 10. These factors explained 53.24% of total variance that the first factor accounts for 29.678% of the variance, the second 13.844% and the third 9.718%. In determining factors, factor loadings greater than 0.40 were considered as to be significant.
As anticipated, the first factor accounts for 29.678% of variance and 7 variables were loaded significantly. A relevant name for this on loading's pattern is economic impact Eigen value of this factor was 4.479, which was placed at the first priority among the impacts of urban tourism. These items were tourism creates job for locals, attracts more investment to the city, good for community’s economic development, living standards increase more rapidly, improve public infrastructure, makes transportation better and increase quality of services in the Bishoftu town.
The second factor is associated mostly with the variables related to economic and environmental aspect of urban tourism. Thus, this factor can be named as economic and environmental impacts. The Eigen value for this factor is 2.215, which explains about 14 percent of the total variance. The items were tourism is beneficial for a small group of people, transformed the city in an overcrowded urban territory,increase in the cost of living, increases the urban pollution and it is responsible for the water sanity.
The name assigned to the third factor is socio-cultural impacts. This factor with Eigen value of 1.555 explains 9.718% of the total variance of the effects of urban tourism. All assessments included in this factor were tourism influences the evolution of local arts, commercializes the local traditions, restore old customs and promotes better understanding between people. As a result, factor analysis revealed that there were three dimensions of tourism impacts that were perceived by current residents of Bishoftu town. Thus, this study concluded that tourism development could influence residents’ viewpoint of the economic, social, cultural and environmental factors of the local community (Table 11).
Hypothesis 1: The underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism do not differ by gender of the Bishoftu town residents.
The results of the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) given in Table 11 indicated that there was no significant difference between Bishoftu residents’ gender and the underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism (Wilk’sLamda = 0.716; F = 1.640 ; P-value = 0.083).
Hypothesis 2: The underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism do not differ by age of Bishoftu town residents.
The results of the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that there wasno significant difference between residents’ age category and the three underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism (Wilk’sLamda = .435 ; F = 0.761 ; P-value = 0.929).
Hypothesis 3: The underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism do not differ by occupation category of the Bishoftu town residents. The results of the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that there was no significant difference between residents’ occupation category and the three underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism (Wilk’sLamda = 0.427; F = 0.987; P-value = 0.510).
Hypothesis 4: The underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism do not differ by educational level of the Bishoftu town residents.
The results of the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that there was no significant difference between residents’ educational level and the three underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism (Wilk’sLamda = 0.390; F = 1.109; P-value = 0.285).
Hypothesis 5: The underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism do not differ by length of residence of the Bishoftu town residents.
The results of the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that there was no significant difference between residents’ length of residence and the three underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism (Wilk’sLamda = 0.355; F = 1.235; P-value = 0.129).
Hypothesis 6: The underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism do not differ by monthly income level of the Bishoftu town residents.
The results of the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that there wasnosignificant difference between residents’ monthly income level and the three underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism (Wilk’sLamda = 0.615; F = 0.615 ; P-value = 0.902).
Hypothesis 7: The underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism do not differ by Bishoftu town resident’s tourism attachment.
The results of the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that there was a significant difference between residents’ tourism attachment and the three underlying dimensions of the perceived economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of urban tourism (Wilk’sLamda = 0.013 ; F = 19.919 ; P-value = 0.000).
