A revised sustainable livelihood framework for community-based tourism projects in developing countries

ABSTRACT

The main objective of the study is to develop a comprehensive sustainable livelihood framework (SLF) for community-based tourism (CBT) projects in the context of developing countries. For this reason, the Sabah state in Malaysia has been chosen as the unit analysis because of its popularity as an ecotourism destination through CBT projects. Using a qualitative inquiry with CBT project participants, government officials, community leaders and non-governmental organizations, the findings identify all the components in the sustainable livelihood framework developed by the British Department for International Development in 1999. Through the empirical analysis, this study discovered a novel Socio-cultural capital which was not included in the original framework. Thus, a more comprehensive SLF was proposed with the inclusion of novel socio-cultural capital. This study offers readers an understanding of the utility of SLF in tourism projects as well as enrich the current body of knowledge on CBT in developing countries. Future research is also welcomed to utilize the proposed SLF and test empirically in other similar ecotourism destinations.

KEYWORDS:

• Community-based tourism
• framework development
• ecotourism
• Sabah
• developing countries

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by Universiti Malaysia Sabah. Many thanks to Prof Rosazman Hussin for his early comments. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).