A Model of Local Community Participation toward Tourism Planning Process in West Bali National Park

The sustainability of tourism development in conservation areas extremely determined by the level of participation of local communities in the tourism planning process (Okazaki, 2008; Spenceley et al. 2017). However, some research on conservation area based tourism in Bali, such as at Ngurah Rai Grand Forest Park (Gunarsa and Nugroho, 2016), Bali Barat National Park (Sunarta et al. 2017), and Lake Buyan-Tamblingan Natural Tourism Park (Sunarta et al. 2019) indicate that the level local community participation in the tourism planning process is relatively limited. Furthermore, none of these studies has elaborated on the causes of such limitations.

The deficient participation of local communities requires a study of the antecedents of the level of participation of local communities and subsequently examine the effectiveness of the participation of these communities in the conservation area-based tourism planning process. To provide context, this research was conducted in Bali Barat National Park.