Multi-Stakeholder Perception of Tourism Impacts and Ways Tourism Should be Sustainably Developed in Obudu Mountain Resort

Abstract

This paper outlines the findings from an empirical investigation to ascertain whether differences in perception of the impacts of tourism and how tourism should be sustainably developed exist between five stakeholder groups in Obudu Mountain Resort: residents, entrepreneurs, tourists, local government employees and tourism students. Data were collected from stakeholders using 359 self-administered questionnaires. The results of our ANOVA test and Scheffe test performed on the data to discover whether differences exist and which groups differs in the variable used for this study indicate that there were differences in perception of the impacts of tourism in eleven of the sixteen items and in three of the fourteen items for how tourism should be sustainably developed. The variation in differences was very evident for increases in alcoholism, prostitution and sexual permissiveness, and the need for family-owned tourism businesses to be encouraged for the sustainable development of Obudu Mountain Resort. In particular, marked differences in perception were found between local government employees and all stakeholder groups, residents and all stakeholder groups, tourism entrepreneurs and all stakeholder groups, tourists and all stakeholder groups, and tourism students and all stakeholder groups for the impacts of tourism and how tourism should be sustainably developed. Keywords: Stakeholders; Perception; Impacts of tourism; Sustainable tourism; Mountain tourism