Tourism development for community capacity building and community development

Community capacity building is widely acknowledged as an important community development strategy. Its strength lies in its ability to empower community members as citizens to self-manage their lives and environment through facilitating leadership and participation in the building and enactment of shared community vision. In this way tourism has become increasingly important as a contributor for community capacity building in local communities. Many communities also recognize that tourism can stimulate change in social, cultural and environmental dimensions as well. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of community capacity building and community development with respect to tourism development

Barriers and opportunities in the development of rural industries: a case study of silverware and batik production in Kelantan, Peninsular Malaysia

The main objective of this study is to identify the barriers and opportunities faced by handicraft enterprises in underdeveloped regions of Malaysia. The study is based upon both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The findings showed that the handicraft industries are very closely affiliated to the community and they provide significant employment opportunities to the local people; the industries are presently encountering several constraints in relation to the quality and availability of both physical and human resources. Findings also showed age appears to represent an important factor in both constraining the industries' development and in offering a ray of optimism for future development and the majority of the entrepreneurs preferred that the development of their industries should involve evolutionary or gradual change rather than a rapid transformational development. In relation to the rural non-farm sector, the findings of the study have shown handicraft industries play an important role in the rural society by providing occupation and income

Impact of homeownership on children's academic outcomes: a critical methodological review of literature

The primary goal of this paper is to provide a critical methodological review of literature on homeownership and child academic outcomes. It focuses on the strengths and weaknesses regarding causal inference of different research findings. We first build a conceptual framework on the relations between homeownership and child academic outcomes. In the body of the review, six empirical studies using different quasi-experimental techniques were critically analyzed and compared regarding their strengths and weaknesses of establishing causal inference. A final comment on the quality of literature and future directions are also discussed

An empirical research: the relationship between family functioning and early adolescent's emotional intelligence

The aim of the present paper was to survey the relationship between family functioning and the early adolescent’s emotional intelligence. Hence, this research follows a specific objective for determination of the relationship between family functioning and early adolescent’s emotional intelligence (EQ). EQ is a set of abilities such as conception, emotion appraisal and expression, emotion management and regulation, and emotion utilization of emotion. The present study was carried out among 234 Iranian students in the second and grades of guidance schools with ages 12-15 years old. The students (girls and boys) were clustered through random and multistage sampling. Data were collected using the Schutte’s (1998) Emotional Intelligence Scale and Family Assessment Device (FAD), based on McMaster’s model. Pearson correlation between subscales of total family functioning and emotional intelligence was statistically significant. Results of the regression analysis, together with independent variables entered, indicate that as a group, the independent variables significantly contributed to the prediction of emotional intelligence

Barriers to community participation toward touirsm development in Shiraz, Iran

This study deals with concept of community participation, which originates in the developed world. In particular, it analyses and explains the barriers to community participation for tourism development in the context of Shiraz, Iran. It was found that there are operational, structural and cultural barriers to community participation in the tourism development in local communities in Shiraz; although, they do not equally exist in every community and while, these barriers tend to exhibit higher intensity and greater persistence in the new district of Shiraz. The tourism industry in most developing countries is faced with barriers and constraints. It is the intention of this study to bring discussion to barriers of community participation in tourism development. A lack of community participation has been identified as important barriers to effective tourism development in third world countries especially in Iran. In this way, I review literature on the barriers of community participation and discuss the related concepts of community participation, with particular attention to how they may apply to tourism development. Then I illustrate its barriers in Shiraz city. The study applies a visual representation to analyze the context of how local people have participated in tourism development

Influence of socio-economic status in economic empowerment among Iranian farmers

Economic empowerment of farmers is a socioe-conomic process through which farmers are motivated to enhance their belief in self-efficacy, to improve their abilities to control their own resources, to increase their income and to unleash their creative and productive energies to achieve sustainable improvement in their living standards. The farmers must move from being passive recipients of information, services and regulations to a situation where they take full responsibility for their own development and use public and private institutions as resource providers. However, there are many factors which stop farmers benefiting from such development and contribute to farmer's powerlessness such as inequality in economic opportunity, lack of education, knowledge, and skills, lack of access to financial services and lack of access to markets. This study illuminates the relationship between socioe-conomic demographic variables of farmers and their economic empowerment in rural area of Isfahan province, Iran. Indeed, this study discovered the effect of respondents’ background i.e., age, education, annual income, cultivated land size, agriculture experience, year's membership cooperative, and ownership on their economic empowerment. Data was collected from 400 farmers who are the members of 10 agricultural production cooperatives (APC) in Isfahan province. The results of the study showed that among the seven socioe-conomic variables, three had effects on economic empowerment. Among these three, the education had the most effect and played an important role in increasing farmer's economic empowerment. The results, also, showed the impact of annual income and cultivated land size in enhancing economic empowerment of farmers

Assessing sense of community capacity building in tourism development in Shiraz, Iran

The purpose of this paper is to describe a level of sense of community in tourism development for local community in Shiraz. Community capacity building for tourism development requires a range of sense of community. A Sense of community is a necessary condition for tourism development. Specifically, this paper provides an approach for sense of community in relations to tourism development. The paper is based on a study of community capacity building in tourism development which was carried in Shiraz which provides an analysis of the practical application of the approach and implications for community development. The main purpose of the study was to assess the sense of community in tourism development. Lack of community capacity has been identified as barriers to effective tourism development in Shiraz. Thus sense of community was used to measure community capacity building in tourism development. The use of this domain allows community leaders to scrutinize their achievements, address their constraints and measure their progress

Age and gender differences and construct of the children's emotional intelligence

With respect to the age and gender the children’s emotional intelligence construct is still being developed with little empirical support. Hence, this research follows a specific objective for determination of the differences between construct of the children’s’ emotional intelligence (EI) and their personal characteristics such as age and gender. The present study was carried out among 107 Iranian students in the Iranian primary schools in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The students (girls and boys) were clustered in three different age groups, 8, 9, and 10 years old. Data were collected using the Emotional Quotient Inventory Youth Version (Bar- on EQ-i; YV, 2000) and demographic questionnaire. The statistical findings, with respect to gender and ages, indicated that there was a noticeable difference between emotional intelligence of girls and boys in groups of ages

The moderating role of family ecological factors (family size) on the relationships between family environment and emotional intelligence

While a huge of literature indicates that family environment influence emotional intelligence, the family size as one of the important determinants which buffers this effect received little empirical attention. The current study investigated the moderating role of family size on the relationships between family environment and emotional intelligence among 234 early adolescents (girls and boys) in grades 2 and 3 of guidance schools of Tehran, Iran. Data were collected using the Emotional Quotient Inventory Youth Version (Bar- on EQ-i; YV, 2000) and the Moos and Moos Family Environment Scale. Results revealed that family environment fostered emotional intelligence in their early adolescents. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that family size moderated the relationship between family environment and emotional intelligence. Specifically, early adolescents tended to indicate more emotional intelligence at higher levels of family environment when family have fewer members. These findings underscore the need for continued focus on the role of family size when assessing the links between family environment and early adolescent’s emotional intelligence. Researchers have demonstrated that in family functioning related to early adolescents’ emotions, family and their characters such as family size is very important in the lives at early adolescence