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The impact assessment of tourism development on agricultural land use : a case study of the impact on traditional village land use patterns in Bali

University of British Columbia

The impact of tourism development on traditional village land use patterns, as perceived and evaluated by villagers, should be considered in evaluating the desirability of particular development programs or projects for regions such as Bali. The preservation of Balinese culture is accepted as an essential goal by virtually everyone in Indonesia, especially in Bali, but inevitably there is a continuing debate over the negative and positive impacts of the intrusion of massive tourism development on that culture. Tourism development cannot occur in Bali without the loss of some agricultural land, some changes in traditional village land use patterns, and some decline of Balinese culture. There will always be conflict between traditional systems and modernization in the process of economic growth. The problems of preserving traditional cultural values and managing the pressures of modernization should be clearly formulated, based primarily on the society's perception and evaluation of the impact of growth on its goal preferences. Planners must refine their understanding of community interests in order to analyze and evaluate the impact of a given program or project on a given society, communicate with the proponents and opponents, understand their objectives and measure the community's perceptions and evaluations of the impacts. The impact of tourism development is discussed in relation to the loss of agricultural land, the change in traditional village land-use patterns and the decline of traditional Balinese culture. In order to achieve the major goals, continued growth of the region and maintainance of its cultural values, those cultural values which depend upon agricultural activities must first be identified. Specifically, it is assumed that there are strong relationships between agricultural land-use, traditional village land-use patterns, and Balinese culture. Because tourism development in Bali relies heavily upon the Balinese culture to attract the tourists, it is assumed that tourism development directly or indirectly alters traditional village land-use patterns, 'especially agricultural land-use. The effect of continued uncontrolled tourism will be a decline in agricultural land-use and a change in traditional village land-use patterns, directly affecting Balinese culture. This would then reduce the appeal of Bali as a tourist attraction. The hypothesis of the study is that those villagers who are in the areas most affected by tourism development will have less traditional attitudes towards the retention of traditional land-use than those who are in isolated areas. Knowledge of these local community attitudes is an important factor in helping to mediate and plan to avoid the conflict between tourism development and traditional systems. This is particularly the case in the Balinese example, where a strong communal system is at the root of the culture. To clarify the above assumptions and to test this hypothesis, the study was organized in four stages: a review of the literature dealing with Bali, a comparative examination of village land use changes from 1969 to 1979, a questionnaire adaptation of the Delphi technique to measure the consensus of the villagers1 perception and evaluation of tourism impact, and finally the statistical analysis. Indices of the level of villagers' perceptions and evaluations of the tourism development impact and future regional growth orientation which aggregated the consensus preferences were constructed from the data analysis. The weighting system was obtained by using a scaling device to determine the greatest preference for the quality in question. A significant community preference was shown to exist, from which it was concluded that the hypothesis was untrue. The implication of these findings is that input about goal preferences of the society is absolutely necessary. However, public involvement in the planning process depends on the willingness of the government. The Delphi technique was successful in eliciting information about how society perceives and evaluated changes caused by tourism development. There was general agreement among respondents in terms of how they perceived and evaluated changes to traditional village land use, and how these changes affect Balinese culture. A consensus of opinion also existed about the socio-economic impact of tourism, and about options for future development. Further study is needed to reconsider the tested hypothesis and to improve the validity and significance the results on villager perceptions and evaluations.

Text

2010-03-26

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/22556

Planning

University of British Columbia

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