Tourism Revenue Sharing And Community Participation In Tourism And Conservation Around Volcanoes National Park In Rwanda

ABSTRACT

The study assessed Tourism Revenue Sharing (TRS) and its impact on community participation

in conservation and tourism around Volcanoes national park in Rwanda. Further the study

objectives were to analyze implementation of TRS and its impact on community participation in

conservation and tourism around Volcanoes National Parks (VNP). In addition, the Local

communities’ attitude towards tourism revenue sharing around VNP was assessed and how it

impacted on their participation in conservation and tourism, to identify the constraints to revenue

sharing around VNP. To achieve the above objectives the researcher used a descriptive research

design utilizing both quantitative and qualitative techniques. A sample of five Rwanda

Development Board (RDB) staff, eight local leaders and one hundred and seventy eight local

communities was used. Also the researcher used simple random sampling to select local

communities’ respondents and purposive sampling technique to select Rwanda Development

Board staff and Local leaders. The results indicate that TRS implementation is not clear to many

as there were contradictions in how the Officials of RDB say as compared to responses from the

locals. However there was a general appreciation from a majority of the respondents (70%) in the

TRS program. In spite of the dissatisfaction among majority of the respondents on the way TRS

was being implemented, the majority of the respondents (90%) stated that they would readily

participate in conservation and tourism activities if they were more involved in TRS process.

From these inferences the researcher concluded that the participation of local communities in

conservation and tourism activities was not influenced by the way TRS was being implemented

or by the benefits accrued from it. However TRS could act as an inducement to improve local

community participation. The findings however indicated that there was weak relationship

between TRS implementation and community participation in conservation and tourism around

Volcanoes national park (P