A study on participation of the cuchi community in tourism business by kap survey

Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II<br /> <br /> A STUDY ON PARTICIPATION OF THE CUCHI COMMUNITY<br /> IN TOURISM BUSINESS BY KAP SURVEY<br /> Nguyen Thi Hai, Associate Prof., PhD<br /> Bui Cam Phuong, MA<br /> Department of Vietnamese Studies<br /> Tóm tắt: KAP (kiến thức, thái độ và thực tiễn) là kĩ thuật thu thập, đánh giá ba loại<br /> thông tin cơ bản để giúp nắm bắt được vị trí của cộng đồng trong một vấn đề có liên quan<br /> đến người dân trong một địa bàn nào đó. Chính vì vậy nó được sử dụng khá rộng rãi trong<br /> các vấn đề nghiên cứu y tế cộng đồng không chỉ ở nước ngoài mBuià cả ở Việt Nam. Tuy<br /> nhiên kĩ thuật này chưa được sử dụng trong nghiên cứu du lịch. Bài báo giới thiệu kết quả<br /> khảo sát, phân tích dữ liệu điều tra 345 mẫu được tiến hành thu thập ở khu di tích cách mạng<br /> địa đạo Củ Chi trong năm 2013. Kết quả khảo sát đã giúp xác định được khoảng cách (gaps)<br /> giữa các yếu tố điều tra KAP, đây sẽ là căn cứ quan trọng để đề xuất các giải pháp phát triển<br /> du lịch cộng đồng tại địa bàn.<br /> Từ khóa: community participation, tourism survey, KAP, Cu Chi, Vietnam.<br /> INTRODUCTION<br /> Sustainable tourism, in general, and community-based tourism in particular, have been<br /> the optimist choice of tourism development in many developing countries, including Vietnam.<br /> Researches on community and its participation in tourism development, though old-fashioned,<br /> have never stopped being a hot-debated area among tourism researchers in Vietnam.<br /> However, up to present, not many of such researches introduce a standardized procedure for<br /> tourism survey on this topic. The lack of methods raises questions about the systematic,<br /> objective, and scientific nature of the results. In this context, KAP survey seems to be an<br /> appropriate solution to deal with the rather subjective issue, the people's perception.<br /> Following Gitar Bamezai (2012) KAP survey was first done in the field of family<br /> planning and population studies in the 1950s. Then, it has been applied for advocacy,<br /> communication and social mobilization (ACSM) strategy planning for Community Health,<br /> HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, etc. The WTO has issued many guidelines to develop KAP survey.<br /> One of typical KAP studies has been a project implemented by the Mongolia's Ministry of<br /> Health in order to find out factors of indoor air quality and its relationship with respiratory<br /> symptoms where the children suffering from bronchitis is 5–15 times higher in Ulaanbaatar<br /> than in rural areas.<br /> In Vietnam, the UNICEF has been the first organization to apply the KAP survey on<br /> the issue of social inclusion for children with disabilities in the provinces of AnGiang and<br /> DongNai in 2011 (Trinh Tung (2011). The main objective of this study is to suggest solutions<br /> for developing communication strategies and social support for children with disabilities in<br /> Vietnam. Other applications of KAP survey are focused on health community studies such as<br /> by Alison Dexter et al. (2009), Nguyen Vu Quoc Binh (2010), Nguyen Thi Ngoc Ha<br /> (1999), Nguyen Phuong Hoa (1999) Toan Nguyen et al. (2007) , … Rarely a paper dealing<br /> with KAP survey applied in tourism industry has been found.<br /> <br /> Trường Đại học Thăng Long<br /> <br /> 272<br /> <br /> Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II<br /> <br /> METHODOLOGY<br /> The application of KAP has been implemented in five stages: 1) Identifying the<br /> objective of the research; 2) Outlining the process of survey; 3) Developing the questionnaire;<br /> 4) Doing pilot survey and real survey; and 5) Analyzing the data.<br /> The number of sample is identified based on the formula:<br /> Nz2pq<br /> n= ----------------<br /> <br /> in which: N: the population; z: the distribution,<br /> <br /> N + z2pq<br /> With the estimated population of tourism participators of 700 to 900, the number of<br /> sample is calculated to be 260 (with level of confidence 95%, p=0.5, q=1-p). In fact, we had<br /> delivered 300 questionnaires, and collected 254, which are fully answered.<br /> The questions on the questionnaire are conducted into four parts. The first part<br /> includes questions about demographical characteristics of the interviewees. The second, third,<br /> and fourth parts successively convey questions on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices<br /> (participation activities) of the interviewees. Most of them are multiple choices. Before the<br /> survey was done, they had been discussed among professionals.<br /> The survey was then conducted with trained interviewers and selected interviewees to<br /> reduce bias. After that, the collected data was processed and analyzed into defined tables for<br /> the suggestion part. This paper makes a contribution to the tourism studies by adopting the<br /> KAP survey technique into community participation researches which, as far as we have<br /> studied, has never been applied before.<br /> Based on SMART principle, the authors have developed questions for a questionnaire<br /> on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of participants in tourism in three villages near the<br /> Cuchi Heritage Site, namely An Phu, Phu My Hung, An Nhon Tay. Following solutions have<br /> been suggested based on the found gaps between these three dimensions, i.e. between<br /> Knowledge and Attitude, and between Attitude and Practices.<br /> RESULTS<br /> The characteristics of participants in tourism industry<br /> Of the 254 interviewees, 79.2% are villagers living in the surroundings of Cuchi<br /> tunnels, while the others are those permanently living in other provinces but doing business<br /> here. The interviewees are 60 years old or over (27.95%). Female outnumbers male by 58.3%<br /> to 41.7%. Concerned the education of interviewees, the rate of illiterate people and of<br /> undergraduates are similar 14.57%, showing an unexpectedly high rate of uneducated and a<br /> low rate of high educated population compared to the general population as figured by the<br /> statistics.<br /> <br /> Trường Đại học Thăng Long<br /> <br /> 273<br /> <br /> Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II<br /> <br /> Figure 1. Educational level of respondents<br /> The community's knowledge<br /> The knowledge of community-based tourism<br /> The two questions conveying the community's knowledge about community-based<br /> tourism (CBT). The first asked about the definition, and the second the meaning of CBT. Just<br /> above one-third (35.0%) could have the right answer for the first, while that of the second is<br /> over 70%. There is a notably high rate of interviewees who answered them as "I do not know"<br /> (12.2% for the first and 13.4% for the second). The results indicate that a majority of the<br /> participants, who may know the term or not, are quite aware of the economic opportunities the<br /> CTB deems to bring; while, on the other hand, a minority of the population take part in<br /> tourism business spontaneously with either concern or knowledge of tourism and CBT.<br /> <br /> Figure 2. Respondents’ knowledge about tourism and CBT<br /> The community's knowledge of their historic site<br /> Among the next six questions on the community's knowledge of the site, which are<br /> conducted to be rather concrete and difficult for outsiders, numbers of people having the right<br /> answer for each question are lowest at 55.91% and highest at 72.83%. The figures of "I do not<br /> know" or "I do not remember" answers are consequently low, below 10% in most cases.<br /> These statistics imply that participants have good knowledge of the place, despite the high<br /> illiterate rate mentioned above.<br /> <br /> Trường Đại học Thăng Long<br /> <br /> 274<br /> <br /> Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II<br /> <br /> Figure 3. Respondents’ knowledge about Cuchi<br /> The community's attitude<br /> The next seven questions unveil the community's attitude towards their Heritage Site<br /> (the question 13th) and their tourists (the questions 14th to 19th). Results show that almost all<br /> participants are proud of the historic value of the site (88.98%), and are willing to welcome<br /> guests (79.13%) as well as to take part in more tourism-related activities (89.76%). For the<br /> question on bad behaviors toward tourists such as surcharging much more expensive than the<br /> ordinary price, 49.21% are "against" and 25.59% are "totally against". It can be interpreted<br /> that participants are highly aware of the cost of bad attitudes toward tourists. In other words,<br /> we could have a good background for building tourism business "culture", which may still be<br /> a big problem for many other provinces in Vietnam.<br /> Table 1. Attitude of the respondents<br /> Questions<br /> <br /> All Vietnamese know about Cuchi?<br /> <br /> Answers<br /> <br /> Number Percentage<br /> of choice<br /> <br /> Sure<br /> <br /> 226<br /> <br /> 88.98%<br /> <br /> Not sure<br /> <br /> 19<br /> <br /> 7.48%<br /> <br /> I don’t know<br /> <br /> 9<br /> <br /> 3.54%<br /> <br /> Do you want more visitors to come Sure<br /> here?<br /> <br /> 201<br /> 79.13%<br /> <br /> Like this time is enough<br /> <br /> 40<br /> <br /> 15.75%<br /> <br /> Less than this time<br /> <br /> 13<br /> <br /> 5.12%<br /> <br /> Do you want your family members to do Sure<br /> tourism business?<br /> No<br /> <br /> Trường Đại học Thăng Long<br /> <br /> 228<br /> 89.76%<br /> 26<br /> <br /> 10.24%<br /> <br /> 275<br /> <br /> Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II<br /> <br /> The community's participation activities in community-based tourism<br /> The last group of questions concerns the current activities as well as the desire for<br /> participation in CBT. Asked about whether they would introduce their heritage site to tourists,<br /> an amazingly high number (43.3%) of interviewees said they could not even they wished to. It<br /> may be a result of low educated rate, lack of foreign language. Thus, it is not surprising that<br /> almost all of them (79.53%) are willing to participate in training courses and alike.<br /> Table 2. Respondents’ tourism business<br /> Number<br /> of choice<br /> <br /> Question and answers<br /> What’s your kind of business<br /> here?<br /> <br /> 242<br /> <br /> Percentage<br /> <br /> 95,28%<br /> <br /> Tour guide<br /> <br /> 28<br /> <br /> 11,02%<br /> <br /> Mototaxi driver<br /> <br /> 53<br /> <br /> 20,87%<br /> <br /> Homestay<br /> <br /> 22<br /> <br /> 8,66%<br /> <br /> Bars<br /> <br /> 91<br /> <br /> 35,83%<br /> <br /> Restaurant<br /> <br /> 18<br /> <br /> 7,09%<br /> <br /> Souvernir seller<br /> <br /> 16<br /> <br /> 6,30%<br /> <br /> Guest house<br /> <br /> 14<br /> <br /> 5,51%<br /> <br /> About the main activities that they participated in, the highest rate (35.83%) falls in<br /> small business selling stuffs and snacks and etc; the second and third are in xe-om (motor-taxi<br /> driving), and local tour guide. A much lower number (8.66%) comes for home-stay business,<br /> but individual interviews show that those people almost lack necessary facilities to host the<br /> guests. Moreover, collected data also confirm the hypothesis that community's participation in<br /> CTB is poor in quality and limited in activities as well as in the number of participants.<br /> DISCUSSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS<br /> The results above point out the gaps between community's knowledge, attitude and<br /> practices in CBT. The first gap is between their knowledge and attitude. This gap can be divided<br /> into smaller groups to give solutions more concrete. For example, the first group are those who<br /> have knowledge and good attitude but do not have skills to realize their wish to participate in<br /> tourism activities. Although they are very proud of their places and have many stories to tell<br /> about their beloved land, a lower than half of them are enough confident to put them into<br /> beneficial and meaningful activities for tourism business. Thus, the solution for this group is to<br /> create and urge them to participate in small training courses like communication skills, tour<br /> guide skills, language courses, professional talks, etc. For the group who have good attitude but<br /> lack of knowledge, the solution for them is to encourage them to take a more proactive part in<br /> Trường Đại học Thăng Long<br /> <br /> 276<br /> <br />