An Analysis of the Effect of Obudu Community Participation In Ecotourism On Poverty

Abstract

The effect of participation of Obudu community in tourism on household’s poverty forms the focus of this study.Simple random sampling was employed to select 126 participating households across 4 randomly selectedcommunities out of 6 in Obudu Local Government Area. Descriptive statistics, Probit model and OLS Regressionmodel were adopted for the analysis. The result showed that the pattern of participation in Obudu tourism revolvearound providing transportation and accommodation/feeding services and being primarily employed in Obudutourism Industry. Having access to tourism information, gender and household monthly income positively andsignificantly influenced the probability of the community people to participate in Obudu tourism while years ofliving in Obudu, dependency burden and membership of different associations negatively and significantlyinfluenced participation in Obudu tourism. Also, results from the analysis showed that increase in tourism income ofboth active and non active participating core poor and moderate poor households in Obudu tourism will reducepoverty level. Allowing the local community members access to adequate tourism information and reduction infamily sizes can improve participation in tourism. The study therefore recommend that awareness campaigns shouldbe consistently made against early marriage, early child bearing and polygamous practice as they are the likely causeof large household size which have led to the persistence of poverty in Obudu community.

Key words: Tourism, Community participation, Poverty reduction.