Relationship Between Tourism and Local Community Development in Terms of Health in Arusha Region, Tanzania

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between tourism and community development in terms of health in Arusha Region, Tanzania. The study addressed the following specific objective: to examine the relationship between tourism and community development in terms of health in Arusha Region. The study employed the mixed research method, where both quantitative and qualitative approaches were applied. The population of the study was diverse; it included 500 respondents from the community (500 calculated by Slovin’s formula and 100 added at the researcher’s discretion to increase the validity and reliability of the findings). There were also 36 community leaders, who were important to the study because they were democratically chosen voices of the community, and lastly there were ten top officials. Since the study employed the mixed methods paradigm, the data analysed were both quantitative and qualitative, where the quantitative data were analysed by use of descriptive data analysis/statistical techniques by the aid of SPSS software version 21.  The study results revealed a statistically significant positive linear relationship between tourism and community development in terms of health, hence the study recommends that central government, particularly the Ministry of Tourism and Natural Resources, should unify efforts of improving the National Tourism Policy, which will maximize the challenge of obtaining trickle-down effects for the development of local communities in terms of health.