Study on Community Participation in Tourism Activities in Phong Nha - Ke Bang National Park

Sustainable tourism development is an indispensable trend of the world tourism industry, aiming to bring socio-economic and environmental harmony but not affect the future of the local community. In particular, the participation of the people in tourism activities plays an important role, they must be empowered in planning activities, managing tourist destinations and providing advice to management agencies. The State develops policies, manages and implements destination tourism planning. With the objective to assess the participation and factors affecting the participation of the community in tourism development, the study compares the theoretical model of Pretty (1995), Sherry Arnstein (1971) and Cevat Tosun (1999) From there choose the model of Pretty (1995) as a research base with the scale of participation is 7 steps and scales to evaluate the influencing factors according to groups: The people's awareness group on tourism has 6 criteria; group of motivating factors has 15 criteria; The barrier factor group has 11 criteria. Based on that, the study conducts the participation assessment and the factors affecting people's participation in tourism activities in Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park where is a famous tourist destination in Vietnam, twice honored by UNESCO as a world natural heritage site with outstanding geological - geomorphological criteria and biodiversity criteria with a top-valued cave system world.