Developing climate change dimensions in Malaysia through tourists’ perception

Climate change has long since ceased to be a scientific curiosity and is no longer just one of many environmental and regulatory concerns. It is a growing crisis with economic, health and safety, food production, security and other dimensions. Shifting weather patterns for example, threaten food production through increased unpredictability of precipitation. Rising sea levels contaminate coastal freshwater reserves and increase the risk of catastrophic flooding. Climate change in Malaysia is usually associated with extreme weather and seasonality. Extreme weather variables include temperature, rainfall and to a certain extent, wind. Meanwhile, seasonality is always associated with dry and wet/monsoon season. This paper outlines the research experience that sets out to determine the dimension of climate change in Malaysia based on tourists’ perception. The establishment of these dimensions will provide structured framework for other researches. The exploratory nature of this research and its comprehensiveness employ both qualitative and quantitative techniques. The research suggests that there are five dimensions of climate change, which are humidity, rainfall, sea level, vegetation and activity. The outputs are expected to establish knowledge on how climatic dimensions affected the socio-economy of a country especially in the tourism industry and help policy-makers to strategise future adaptation planning and responding to the potential threats of climate change in order to achieve sustainable development

Success of Ecotourism Sites and Local Community Participation in Sabah

Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, is an ecotourism destination that is well known in the international tourism scene, where nature and culture has been positioned as the two main products. With high biodiversity and more than 30 distinctive cultures, ecotourism has been embraced by all stakeholders in the state since the 1990s. After a decade or so, many stakeholders are very eager to judge and give judgments of what success entails. The complexity of the stakeholders' characteristics usually results in various perceptions of success. The thesis sets out to interpret and develop the indicators for success of local community participation and ecotourism sites in Sabah. Both, local community participation and ecotourism site were chosen due to the nature of the ecotourism industry where business and community development is very closely tied together. This thesis employs plans and policy analysis and comparative case study as its methodology. The data were then analysed to get the results, which are success indicators for local community participation and ecotourism sites based on the perception of stakeholders. The indicators emerged from the analysis are put into perspective by analysing the results with the analysis of plans and policies and case studies. Two sets of indicators are proposed, both for local community participation success and ecotourism site's success, which is valuable to the industry in reviewing their current plans and policies. It is also useful in monitoring and evaluating current local community participation activities. The indicators are quite consistent with those others drawn from the literature review. The analysis also shows that there are issues that need to be addressed with regards to these indicators. These indicators are output-based, therefore there is a need to establish the measurement or the parameters of these indicators to make it more quantifiable and more meaningful. Another aspect that the thesis identified is that the strongest indicators are those that were agreed by all stakeholders and the recipients that benefits are both the site and the local community. While this is emphasising the importance of local community in the ecotourism set up, it is also suggested that a set up of an integrated development and management among stakeholders, of local community and ecotourism with the common objective and common operational process, are seen as successful. This will contribute to tourism literature by enhancing the knowledge of ecotourism, and to the ecotourism industry by providing a means of evaluating local community participation activities and ecotourism sites

Contemporary Regional Issues in Sustainability : Prospective Application for Activation of Local Community and University Education from an International Seminar

Employment of the education for sustainable development (ESD) is one of the important issues for the innovation of university education. ESD includes key sustainable development issues such as poverty, social design, commercialization, community participation and livelihood from the global standpoint of view. An international sustainable seminar was held in Malaysia to share the concept for sustainability in 2016. As the result, the concept for sustainability or sustainable society was shown to have diversity. It is suggested that a practical study for the diversity of the idea for sustainability has a potential to consider the concurrent global issues from the historical point of view. Such an international collaboration sharing the concept for sustainability will be an effective way for surveying the new field of a research for sustainability in the regional society and an innovation of University education employing ESD

Sustainability of Chinese tourism-assisting the poor policies: The perspective of policy values

As tourism sustainability is not clearly defined, tourism policies in many countries are criticized for overemphasizing economic growth. Chinese tourism has contributed significantly to poverty reduction and sustainable development in impoverished areas under the guidance of the tourism-assisting the poor policies (TAPPs). But little literature has investigated whether and how Chinese TAPPs promote sustainable development in impoverished areas. As policy values are the basis of policy formulation and implementation, this study identifies the sustainability values reflected in typical Chinese TAPP documents to fill this gap. This study conducts the content analysis of the TAPP documents issued by the Chinese Central Government during 1984–2020 under the modified framework of sustainability value dimensions. It’s found that the overall sustainability value structure of TAPPs is dominated by economic and social-cultural values, contributing to the success of Chinese absolute poverty eradication. The steady increase in environmental values implies the Chinese government’s growing attention to environmental problems caused by tourism-assisting the poor initiative though still far from enough. The evolution of TAPP sustainability values is consistent with Chinese economic and social development strategies. The research is expected to help international scholars better understand TAPPs’ role in achieving SDG and offer implications for the Chinese government in improving sustainability in the rural revitalization strategy

Character assessment for heritage landscape resource at world heritage site

Heritage landscape a great variety of unique landscapes can be identified with distinctive regions of earth with historical value, unchanged, rare and pre-existing species of the present and the future. Heritage landscape perspectives are important to recognize, preserve, enhance and enrich the landscape values associated with heritage history. The aim of this paper is to contribute a comprehensive, holistic character assessment for the perspective of heritage landscape resources. Some parameters to consider in determining a landscape heritage resources. The parameters are divided into five sections and sub-topics are linear considered. The approach is a continuation of the findings of three main categories of criteria assessment, i.e. primary, secondary and minor. The research involved four categories of stakeholders as respondents, which is Government, Non-Governmental Organizations or NGOs, such as Mountain Guides, Visitors and Local. Methodology approach is a mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) of findings validated through triangulation data. Privileges of heritage landscape evaluation criteria can be used as a guide for evaluating heritage landscape resources and assisting local authorities as an alternative to developing policies and guidelines for public heritage sites

An extended model of destination image formation: The inclusion of sensory images

The purpose of this study is to examine the development of destination image from the sensory form to the cognitive and affective forms, and the effects that these three types of destination image can have on tourist intention. Japan’s Tohoku district was selected as the destination, while Malaysia’s respondents were chosen as the potential tourists. This study proved that the model of destination image formation must begin from the sensory images and continue with the cognitive images and the affective image. The linear correlations between the sensory, cognitive and affective elements further facilitate the intention to visit the destination of potential tourists. Among the three, affective image has the largest effect on intention. However, the formation of the affective image is under the influence of the sensory and cognitive images, with that of the former to be larger. Implications for destination image promotion, with an emphasis on the sensory elements, are discussed

An extended model of destination image formation: The inclusion of sensory images

The purpose of this study is to examine the development of destination image from the sensory form to the cognitive and affective forms, and the effects that these three types of destination image can have on tourist intention. Japan’s Tohoku district was selected as the destination, while Malaysia’s respondents were chosen as the potential tourists. This study proved that the model of destination image formation must begin from the sensory images and continue with the cognitive images and the affective image. The linear correlations between the sensory, cognitive and affective elements further facilitate the intention to visit the destination of potential tourists. Among the three, affective image has the largest effect on intention. However, the formation of the affective image is under the influence of the sensory and cognitive images, with that of the former to be larger. Implications for destination image promotion, with an emphasis on the sensory elements, are discussed