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

Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II Trường Đại học Thăng Long 272 A STUDY ON PARTICIPATION OF THE CUCHI COMMUNITY IN TOURISM BUSINESS BY KAP SURVEY Nguyen Thi Hai, Associate Prof., PhD Bui Cam Phuong, MA Department of Vietnamese Studies Tóm tắt: KAP (kiến thức, thái độ và thực tiễn) là kĩ thuật thu thập, đánh giá ba loại thông tin cơ bản để giúp nắm bắt được vị trí của cộng đồng trong một vấn đề có liên quan đến người dân trong một địa bàn nào đó. Chính vì vậy nó được sử dụng khá rộng rãi trong các vấn đề nghiên cứu y tế cộng đồng không chỉ ở nước ngoài mBuià cả ở Việt Nam. Tuy nhiên kĩ thuật này chưa được sử dụng trong nghiên cứu du lịch. Bài báo giới thiệu kết quả khảo sát, phân tích dữ liệu điều tra 345 mẫu được tiến hành thu thập ở khu di tích cách mạng địa đạo Củ Chi trong năm 2013. Kết quả khảo sát đã giúp xác định được khoảng cách (gaps) giữa các yếu tố điều tra KAP, đây sẽ là căn cứ quan trọng để đề xuất các giải pháp phát triển du lịch cộng đồng tại địa bàn. Từ khóa: community participation, tourism survey, KAP, Cu Chi, Vietnam. INTRODUCTION Sustainable tourism, in general, and community-based tourism in particular, have been the optimist choice of tourism development in many developing countries, including Vietnam. Researches on community and its participation in tourism development, though old-fashioned, have never stopped being a hot-debated area among tourism researchers in Vietnam. However, up to present, not many of such researches introduce a standardized procedure for tourism survey on this topic. The lack of methods raises questions about the systematic, objective, and scientific nature of the results. In this context, KAP survey seems to be an appropriate solution to deal with the rather subjective issue, the people's perception. Following Gitar Bamezai (2012) KAP survey was first done in the field of family planning and population studies in the 1950s. Then, it has been applied for advocacy, communication and social mobilization (ACSM) strategy planning for Community Health, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, etc. The WTO has issued many guidelines to develop KAP survey. One of typical KAP studies has been a project implemented by the Mongolia's Ministry of Health in order to find out factors of indoor air quality and its relationship with respiratory symptoms where the children suffering from bronchitis is 5–15 times higher in Ulaanbaatar than in rural areas. In Vietnam, the UNICEF has been the first organization to apply the KAP survey on the issue of social inclusion for children with disabilities in the provinces of AnGiang and DongNai in 2011 (Trinh Tung (2011). The main objective of this study is to suggest solutions for developing communication strategies and social support for children with disabilities in Vietnam. Other applications of KAP survey are focused on health community studies such as by Alison Dexter et al. (2009), Nguyen Vu Quoc Binh (2010), Nguyen Thi Ngoc Ha (1999), Nguyen Phuong Hoa (1999) Toan Nguyen et al. (2007) , Rarely a paper dealing with KAP survey applied in tourism industry has been found. Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II Trường Đại học Thăng Long 273 METHODOLOGY The application of KAP has been implemented in five stages: 1) Identifying the objective of the research; 2) Outlining the process of survey; 3) Developing the questionnaire; 4) Doing pilot survey and real survey; and 5) Analyzing the data. The number of sample is identified based on the formula: Nz2pq n= ---------------- in which: N: the population; z: the distribution, N + z2pq With the estimated population of tourism participators of 700 to 900, the number of sample is calculated to be 260 (with level of confidence 95%, p=0.5, q=1-p). In fact, we had delivered 300 questionnaires, and collected 254, which are fully answered. The questions on the questionnaire are conducted into four parts. The first part includes questions about demographical characteristics of the interviewees. The second, third, and fourth parts successively convey questions on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices (participation activities) of the interviewees. Most of them are multiple choices. Before the survey was done, they had been discussed among professionals. The survey was then conducted with trained interviewers and selected interviewees to reduce bias. After that, the collected data was processed and analyzed into defined tables for the suggestion part. This paper makes a contribution to the tourism studies by adopting the KAP survey technique into community participation researches which, as far as we have studied, has never been applied before. Based on SMART principle, the authors have developed questions for a questionnaire on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of participants in tourism in three villages near the Cuchi Heritage Site, namely An Phu, Phu My Hung, An Nhon Tay. Following solutions have been suggested based on the found gaps between these three dimensions, i.e. between Knowledge and Attitude, and between Attitude and Practices. RESULTS The characteristics of participants in tourism industry Of the 254 interviewees, 79.2% are villagers living in the surroundings of Cuchi tunnels, while the others are those permanently living in other provinces but doing business here. The interviewees are 60 years old or over (27.95%). Female outnumbers male by 58.3% to 41.7%. Concerned the education of interviewees, the rate of illiterate people and of undergraduates are similar 14.57%, showing an unexpectedly high rate of uneducated and a low rate of high educated population compared to the general population as figured by the statistics. Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II Trường Đại học Thăng Long 274 Figure 1. Educational level of respondents The community's knowledge The knowledge of community-based tourism The two questions conveying the community's knowledge about community-based tourism (CBT). The first asked about the definition, and the second the meaning of CBT. Just above one-third (35.0%) could have the right answer for the first, while that of the second is over 70%. There is a notably high rate of interviewees who answered them as "I do not know" (12.2% for the first and 13.4% for the second). The results indicate that a majority of the participants, who may know the term or not, are quite aware of the economic opportunities the CTB deems to bring; while, on the other hand, a minority of the population take part in tourism business spontaneously with either concern or knowledge of tourism and CBT. Figure 2. Respondents’ knowledge about tourism and CBT The community's knowledge of their historic site Among the next six questions on the community's knowledge of the site, which are conducted to be rather concrete and difficult for outsiders, numbers of people having the right answer for each question are lowest at 55.91% and highest at 72.83%. The figures of "I do not know" or "I do not remember" answers are consequently low, below 10% in most cases. These statistics imply that participants have good knowledge of the place, despite the high illiterate rate mentioned above. Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II Trường Đại học Thăng Long 275 Figure 3. Respondents’ knowledge about Cuchi The community's attitude The next seven questions unveil the community's attitude towards their Heritage Site (the question 13th) and their tourists (the questions 14th to 19th). Results show that almost all participants are proud of the historic value of the site (88.98%), and are willing to welcome guests (79.13%) as well as to take part in more tourism-related activities (89.76%). For the question on bad behaviors toward tourists such as surcharging much more expensive than the ordinary price, 49.21% are "against" and 25.59% are "totally against". It can be interpreted that participants are highly aware of the cost of bad attitudes toward tourists. In other words, we could have a good background for building tourism business "culture", which may still be a big problem for many other provinces in Vietnam. Table 1. Attitude of the respondents Questions Answers Number of choice Percentage All Vietnamese know about Cuchi? Sure 226 88.98% Not sure 19 7.48% I don’t know 9 3.54% Do you want more visitors to come here? Sure 201 79.13% Like this time is enough 40 15.75% Less than this time 13 5.12% Do you want your family members to do tourism business? Sure 228 89.76% No 26 10.24% Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II Trường Đại học Thăng Long 276 The community's participation activities in community-based tourism The last group of questions concerns the current activities as well as the desire for participation in CBT. Asked about whether they would introduce their heritage site to tourists, an amazingly high number (43.3%) of interviewees said they could not even they wished to. It may be a result of low educated rate, lack of foreign language. Thus, it is not surprising that almost all of them (79.53%) are willing to participate in training courses and alike. Table 2. Respondents’ tourism business Question and answers Number of choice Percentage What’s your kind of business here? 242 95,28% Tour guide 28 11,02% Mototaxi driver 53 20,87% Homestay 22 8,66% Bars 91 35,83% Restaurant 18 7,09% Souvernir seller 16 6,30% Guest house 14 5,51% About the main activities that they participated in, the highest rate (35.83%) falls in small business selling stuffs and snacks and etc; the second and third are in xe-om (motor-taxi driving), and local tour guide. A much lower number (8.66%) comes for home-stay business, but individual interviews show that those people almost lack necessary facilities to host the guests. Moreover, collected data also confirm the hypothesis that community's participation in CTB is poor in quality and limited in activities as well as in the number of participants. DISCUSSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS The results above point out the gaps between community's knowledge, attitude and practices in CBT. The first gap is between their knowledge and attitude. This gap can be divided into smaller groups to give solutions more concrete. For example, the first group are those who have knowledge and good attitude but do not have skills to realize their wish to participate in tourism activities. Although they are very proud of their places and have many stories to tell about their beloved land, a lower than half of them are enough confident to put them into beneficial and meaningful activities for tourism business. Thus, the solution for this group is to create and urge them to participate in small training courses like communication skills, tour guide skills, language courses, professional talks, etc. For the group who have good attitude but lack of knowledge, the solution for them is to encourage them to take a more proactive part in Kỷ yếu công trình khoa học 2014 – Phần II Trường Đại học Thăng Long 277 community's activities. For other groups who have neither information nor knowledge, more education activities should be promoted through local mass media, and in public halls. Particularly, guiding classes for CBT should be widely spread among most groups. The second gap is between their attitude and practices. It is the result of the lack of financial and political support. In this sense, local government should take an initiate part. First and foremost, they should consider to open a guiding meetings, in order to understand their people's difficulties, and support their needs as well as to guide them as a master planner. CONCLUSION In conclusion, the development of community-based tourism in particular and sustainable tourism in general still needs advanced steps of researches. The paper is a humble contribution of authors to improve the objective and scientific nature of community's perception survey by introducing a rather new technique of so-called KAP survey. The data collected from the survey in Cuchi tunnels, one of the Heritage Sites of Vietnam, pictured the current situation in people's mind through three dimensions: Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices. The gaps found out between these dimensions are different between each group of locals, suggesting more concrete and appropriate solutions for better tourism management. Nevertheless, this research is, of course, never a faultlessness, and all kinds of comments will be greatly welcomed for better applications of KAP survey in tourism in the future. REFERENCES [1]. Advocacy, communication and social mobilization for TB control: a guide to developing knowledge, attitude and practice surveys. WHO Library Cataloguing-in- Publication Data 2006. [2]. Alison Dexter , Lien Phuong Tran , Jean - Pierre Depasse , Le Mai Khanh , Thu Hang Dam Matthew Erickson . Report on Children with Disabilities and Family Children with disabilities in Danang. Knowledge - Attitudes - Behaviour. 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Chính vì vậy nó được sử dụng khá rộng rãi trong các vấn đề nghiên cứu y tế cộng đồng không chỉ ở nước ngoài mà cả ở Việt Nam. Tuy nhiên kĩ thuật này chưa được sử dụng trong nghiên cứu du lịch. Bài báo giới thiệu kết quả khảo sát, phân tích dữ liệu điều tra 345 mẫu được tiến hành thu thập ở khu di tích cách mạng địa đạo Củ Chi trong năm 2013. Kết quả khảo sát đã giúp xác định được khoảng cách giữa các yếu tố điều tra KAP, đây sẽ là căn cứ quan trọng để đề xuất các giải pháp phát triển du lịch cộng đồng tại địa bàn.