Symbolic participation in community-based tourism in Kelimutu National Park, Ende, East Nusa Tenggara

Abstract

with qualitative and quantitative combination has performed to describe the community participation in ecotourism development in Kelimutu National Park, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. This research involves 362 respondent and 36 informants to describe the community participation in ecotourism program. This research shows that community participation was implemented in symbolic participation form. Community involvement practically only used as a conditions to get program approval. As a result, the majority of local community (48%) fell less involved in ecotourism development, especially in natural resources usage. Respondents has less concern to support attraction, accessibility and amenity preservation (49.2%) of tourism. It seems to be related to the respondent's conditions, in which respondent state tourism in Kelimutu not contribute to the society prosperity. Since there are significant impacts of symbolic community participation, there are important to perform more strategy and approach to increase the participation level of the community in ecotourism program. The synergy among stakeholder to increase the community-based ecotourism with active community participation was needed.