Regional Sustainability ›› 2024, Vol. 5 ›› Issue (3): 100163.doi: 10.1016/j.regsus.2024.100163cstr: 32279.14.j.regsus.2024.100163
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Piyall CHATTERJEE*(), Soumyendra Kishore DATTA
Received:
2023-04-27
Revised:
2024-02-11
Accepted:
2024-08-22
Published:
2024-09-30
Online:
2024-09-25
Contact:
Piyall CHATTERJEE
E-mail:piyalichatterjee455@gmail.com
Piyall CHATTERJEE, Soumyendra Kishore DATTA. Preserving environmental quality of ecotourism sites through community participation in Purulia District of West Bengal, India[J]. Regional Sustainability, 2024, 5(3): 100163.
Table 1
Socio-economic features of respondents."
Feature | Variable | Mean value | Percentage (%) |
---|---|---|---|
Gender | Male | - | 92.0 |
Female | - | 8.0 | |
Age | 15-24 years old | - | 33.0 |
25-34 years old | - | 25.0 | |
35-44 years old | - | 20.0 | |
45-54 years old | - | 14.0 | |
55-65 years old | - | 8.0 | |
Education level | Non-formal education | - | 6.0 |
Primary education | - | 21.0 | |
Junior middle school education | - | 17.0 | |
High school education | - | 38.0 | |
College education | - | 18.0 | |
Income | 0.00-60.24 USD/month | 44.11 | 26.0 |
60.25-120.48 USD/month | 77.70 | 61.0 | |
120.49-180.72 USD/month | 134.04 | 8.0 | |
180.73-240.96 USD/month | 212.85 | 3.0 | |
>240.96 USD/month | 265.06 | 2.0 |
Table 2
Perception of respondents on environmental protection of ecotourism sites."
Statement | Strongly agree (%) | Agree (%) | Neither agree nor disagree (%) | Disagree (%) | Strongly disagree (%) | Mean of 5-point Likert scale value | Standard Deviation |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Do you think that forest resource should not be depleted here? | 65.0 | 35.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.35 | 0.48 |
2. Do you think that the surrounding environment should not be soiled with waste, paper, plates, and food residuals? | 59.0 | 40.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.42 | 0.51 |
3. Do you think that the use of plastic should be banned here? | 54.0 | 39.0 | 5.0 | 2.0 | 0.0 | 1.55 | 0.68 |
4. Do you think that environmentally friendly vehicles should be used here? | 6.0 | 40.0 | 16.0 | 38.0 | 0.0 | 2.86 | 1.00 |
5. Do you think that there is ecological degradation due to the lack of proper knowledge of tourists? | 3.0 | 41.0 | 8.0 | 40.0 | 8.0 | 3.09 | 1.11 |
Fig. 2.
Percentage of the perception of respondents to five statements. Statement 1: do you think that forest resource should not be depleted here? Statement 2: do you think that the surrounding environment should not be soiled with waste, paper, plates, and food residuals? Statement 3: do you think that the use of plastic should be banned here? Statement 4: do you think that environmentally friendly vehicles should be used here? Statement 5: do you think that there is ecological degradation due to the lack of proper knowledge of tourists?"
Table 3
Expected impact of explanatory variables on respondents’ willingness to pay (WTP) participatory labour time."
Variable | Description | Measurement | Hypothesis |
---|---|---|---|
Y | Respondents’ WTP participatory labour time | - | - |
X1 | Age | - | People with the lower ages have more enthusiasm and strength, and the longer local employment potential compared to higher age group. Thus, the higher age group will be less willing to offer participatory labour time. |
X2 | Income | - | Higher income groups have more consciousness of the protection of environmental quality and have potential to further increase their income by enhancing the attraction of visitors to these sites. As a result, the higher the income, the more enthusiastic people are to provide more participatory labour time for the local cleaning work. |
X3 | Education level | - | People with relatively higher levels of education are more aware of the importance of environmental sustainability and protection. Thus, local stakeholders with the higher education have significantly more WTP participatory labour time for keeping the environment clean and pollution free. |
X4 | Environmental quality | Based on the mean value of 5-point Likert scale for each statement | Maintenance or improvement of environmental quality may induce offering of increased participatory labour time. Those who think environmental quality of ecotourism site got deteriorated and have better awareness about the importance of environmental upkeep, are likely to offer more participatory labour time compared to those who are not bothered about change in environmental quality or suffer from the lack of its awareness. |
X5 | Caste | General caste was assigned a value of 1, and otherwise 0 | People not belonging to the general caste have more enthusiasm, closeness to nature and more WTP participatory labour time for implementation of the environmental restoration programme compared to people of general caste. |
Table 4
Results of respondents’ WTP participatory labour time and explanatory variables based on the ordinary least square (OLS) model."
Explanatory variable | Coefficient | Standard error | t-statistic | P-value |
---|---|---|---|---|
Age | -0.0537 | 0.0153 | -3.5019 | 0.0007 |
Income | 0.0007 | 0.0004 | 1.5493 | 0.1247 |
Education level | 0.1124 | 0.0455 | 2.4680 | 0.0154 |
Environmental quality | -0.0824 | 0.4221 | -0.1953 | 0.8455 |
Caste | -0.6449 | 0.3607 | -1.7880 | 0.0770 |
Constant | 4.4884 | 1.1588 | 3.8732 | 0.0002 |
R2=0.3393 | F-statistic=9.6529 (P-value=0.0000) | |||
Adjusted R2=0.3041 | Durbin-Watson statistic=1.5790 |
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