Eco-entrepreneurs organizational attitude towards sustainable community ecotourism development

Abstract

Ecotourism is one of the most popular sectors in the modern tourism industry. Eco-entrepreneurship is a recent development in entrepreneurial society. These two sectors together attempt to solve the environmental and socio-economic problems. This paper analyzes eco-entrepreneurs organizational factors for community ecotourism development in the case of Kabani community ecotourism organization. The study comprised of both secondary and primary data. For primary data, the author conducted a field study research with community members of a small-scale eco-entrepreneurial organization, Kabani Community Tourism between October to December 2017. For secondary data, the author engaged in an extensive literature review process to identify eco-entrepreneurship research conducted in the tourism industry. Quantitative primary data were collected through questionnaires among 56 local communities employed by Kabani ecotourism organization. The well-known classified technique, Principle Component Analysis has been performed to find the factors of eco-entrepreneurship organization for local communities development. These factors are named as a social, economic, and environmental development factors. Findings show that local communities see eco-entrepreneur organizational factors socio-economic, environmental and local communities age and environmental educational awareness programmes influence the development of ecotourism.