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ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 144 (2014) 60 – 65

5th Asia Euro Conference 2014

The impact of local communities’ involvement and relationship quality on sustainable rural tourism in rural area, Sarawak. The moderating impact of self-efficacy Fong Sook Funa,*, Lo May Chiunb, Peter Songanc, Vikneswaran Naird a

Institute of Social Informatics and Technological Innovations (ISITI), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 94300 Kota Samarahan, Sar awak, Malaysia b Faculty of Economics and Business, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia c Department of Human Resource Development, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia d School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts, Taylor’s University, No.1, Jalan Taylor’s, 47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract Tourism is recognized as a major growth engine for socio-economic development and poverty alleviation especially in rural destinations. Nonetheless, tourism has negative impact on these rural destinations. As a result, local communities’ attitudes and perceptions toward tourism development are one of the important indicators for sustainable tourism development (Choi & Sirakaya, 2006). Besides, people’s belief about their ability to influence the events is important in order to influence the outcomes (Bandura, 1994). Thus, this study attempts to examine the relationship between local communities’ involvement, relationship quality and sustainable rural tourism with self-efficacy as a moderator in the context of tourism industry in Sarawak. The findings of this study will demonstrate a preliminary conceptual framework on local communities’ involvement, relationship quality and sustainable rural tourism and how self-efficacy moderate the relationship between local communities’ involvement, relationship quality and sustainable rural tourism in Sarawak. © Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. under the CC BY-NC-ND license © 2014 2014 The Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of Asia Euro Conference 2014. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of 5AEC2014. Keywords: Local Community; Involvement; Relationship Quality; Self-efficacy; Sustainable Rural Tourism; Sarawak

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +6-012-228-1673 E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-0428 © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of 5AEC2014. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.07.274

Fong Sook Fun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 144 (2014) 60 – 65

1. Main text Tourism has been recognized for its vast contribution to the economy in many countries in which tourism contributes to economic diversification, profitability, and employment opportunity for a country (Ismail & Turner, 2008). Nonetheless, researchers in the past have noted that local communities’ attitudes and perceptions toward tourism development and tourist fluctuate between the negative and positive (Harrill & Potts, 2003). Besides, the economic impacts are perceived mostly positive while sociocultural, legal, and environmental impacts, are viewed as negative (Tosun, 2002). Thus, it is important to understand local communities’ involvement and relationship quality and how it will impact the sustainability of rural tourism in Sarawak 2. Objective The main objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between local communities’ involvement and relationship quality on sustainable rural tourism (social, cultural, economic, and environmental) with self-efficacy as a moderator in rural areas of Sarawak. 3. Literature Review 3.1. Local Communities’ Attitude Attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degrees of favor or disfavor (Early & Chaiken, 1993). Therefore, it is essential to understand local communities’ attitude because an understanding of local communities’ attitudes allows tourism stakeholders to adopt an adequate responsive mechanism to the negative influences that arise from tourism (Sharma & Dyer, 2009). 3.2. Local Communities’ Perception Perception can be refer to “attitudes” (Lindberg & Johnson, 1997), “residents’ opinions” (Williams & Lawson, 2001), or “reactions” (Fredline & Faulkner, 2000). Therefore, local communities’ perceptions of the cost and benefits of tourism is the major factor in tourist satisfaction and are important for the success of the tourism industry (Andriotis & Vaughan, 2003). 3.3. Local Communities’ Involvement Community involvement can be defined as the magnitude to which the residents are involved in the daily activities within the communities that they live in (Lee, 2013). Hence, tourism development will be more successful with the involvement of the local communities as their perception and attitudes are important for the decision makers to achieve sustainable rural tourism (Eshliki & Kaboudi, 2012). 3.4. Relationship Quality Relationship quality is used to establish long-term relationship with the customers and generate favorable outcomes (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Relationship quality consists of three dimensions, namely trust, commitment, and satisfaction (Chen, Chen, Chen, & Wey, 2011). Thus, relationship quality is salient for the vendor to assess the nature and the intensity of customer relationships and to develop a competitive advantage which is difficult to duplicate (Wong, Hung, & Chow, 2007).

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3.5. Self-Efficacy Self-efficacy refers to people’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances (Bandura, 1986). Thus, it is important to understand local communities’ self-efficacy and its relation to achievement outcomes. 3.6. Rural Tourism Rural tourism located in remote countryside, far away from neighbours (Pesonen, et al., 2011). A recent study reported that rural tourism was an increasingly popular tool of state economic development agencies that use to increase the income of rural inhabitants (Pakurar & Olah, 2008). 3.7. Sustainable Rural Tourism Sustainable tourism can be defined as “tourism which is developed and maintained in an area (community or environment) in such a manner that it remains viable over an infinite period and does not degrade or alter the environment (human or physical) in which it exists to such a degree that it prohibits the successful development and well-being of other activities and processes (Butler, 1991). Social, cultural, economic and environmental dimensions are often used to measure sustainability of a rural tourism (WTO, 2004). Some of the literature that has focused on these dimensions includes the following: 3.7.1. Social Murphy (1985) defines tourism as a sociocultural event for all of the stakeholders. However, tourism development at rural area has led to changes in the structure of the society in positive (Lankford, 1994) and negative ways (Ap & Crompton, 1993). Hence, it is important that social impacts of tourism should be considered throughout the planning process so that benefits can be optimized (Brunt & Courtney, 1999). 3.7.2. Cultural Cultural impact resulted from tourism has long term effect and will cause changes in a society’s values, beliefs, and cultural practices especially in rural tourism destinations (Brunt & Courtney, 1999). Therefore, cultural impact of tourism should be considered throughout the planning process of all rural destinations. 3.7.3. Economic Positive economic aspect of rural tourism development increased employment opportunities and economic growth (Akkawi, 2010). On the contrary, rural tourism development can bring negative economic impact such as increased of land prices to other rural tourism destinations (Ap & Crompton, 1998). Benefits accrued to a minority of the host population will lead to negative attitude and perception among the stakeholders (Easterling, 2004). Hence, equality in benefits distribution is essential in order for the local communities to have positive perception towards rural tourism in their community. 3.7.4. Environmental In today’s community, food safety and environmental friendliness are the most common reason used as an important motive in influencing tourist to visit a destination (Widyasari & Haryanto, 2010). However, mass tourism affects the natural resources of a community. Consequently, local community seems reticent and discontent with the tourism development projects (Mason & Cheyne, 2000). Thus, local communities’ involvement and relationship quality is crucial if rural tourism is to be sustainable.


3.8. Stakeholders Stakeholders refer to those that have legitimate interest in an organization (Donaldson & Preston, 1995). In this study, rural tourism stakeholders refer to local communities that affect or are affected by the achievement in tourism industry (Byrd, et al., 2009). Community refers to the residents who live in a destination that have direct involvement in an activity or project (Akkawi, 2010). 3.9. Conceptualising the Framework The framework will evaluate the relationship between the identified independent variables, dependent variables and moderator, as shown in Figure 1:

Independent Variables

Dependent Variables

Community Involvement in Tourism Activities x Participation in decision making x Knowledge sharing x Empowerment x Level of knowledge about tourism industry

Sustainable Rural Tourism x x x x

Relationship Quality with the stakeholders x Trust x Commitment x Satisfaction

Social Cultural Economic Environmental

Self-Efficacy Moderator

Fig. 1. Conceptual Framework

Smart Partial Least Squares M3 (SmartPLS) and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 18.0 can be used to analyze the data that will be collected for the study.

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4. Potential Contribution This study has a number of theoretical and practical potential contributions for both scholars and practitioners, particularly in the domain of tourism stakeholders. For theoretical perspective, this study provides basis for the researchers to further test on the integrated relationship between local community’s involvement and relationship quality on sustainable rural tourism with self-efficacy as a moderator in the context of tourism industry in Sarawak. From the practical perspective, the findings in this study can provide valuable information to the tourism stakeholders in order to achieve sustainable tourism in general and rural tourism in particular. Hence, this study is useful for tourism stakeholders to understand the importance of local communities’ involvement and relationship quality with self-efficacy as the moderator to sustain and achieve competitive advantage in rural tourism. 5. Conclusion In sum, it is important to understand local communities’ involvement and relationship quality in tourism industry. This is so because they are the key players in tourism development that will lead to favorable or unfavorable tourism performance (Tatoğlu, et al., 2000). Acknowledgements Long Term Research Grant Scheme 2011 [LRGS grant no: JPT.S (BPKI)2000/09/01/015Jld..4(67)] References Akkawi, M. H. (2010). Resident Attitudes towards Tourism Development in Conservative Cultures: The Case of Qatar. University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Andriotis, K., & Vaughan. (2003). Urban Residents’ Attitudes toward Tourism Development: The Case of Crete. Journal of Travel Research, 42(2), 172-185. Ap, J., & Crompton, J. L. (1993). Residents’ Strategies for Responding to Tourism Impacts. Journals of Travel Research, 33(1), 47-50. Ap, J., & Crompton, J. L. (1998). Developing and Testing a Tourism Impact Scale. Journal of Travel Research, 37 (2), 120-130. Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. (486) Bandura, A. (1994). Self-Efficacy. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Brunt, P., & Courtney, P. (1999). Host Perceptions of Sociocultural Impacts. Annals of Tourism Research, 26(3), 493-515. Butler, R. W. (1991). Tourism, Environment, and Sustainable Development. Environmental Conservation, 18(3), 201-209. Byrd, E. T., Bosley, H. E., & Dronberger, M. G. (2009). Comparisons of Stakeholder Perceptions of Tourism Impacts in Rural Ea stern North Carolina. Tourism Management, 30(5), 693-703. (4) Choi, H. C., & Sirakaya, E. (2006). Sustainability Indicators for Managing Community Tourism. Tourism Management, 27(6), 1274-1289. Chen, C. Y., Chen, C. C., Chen, Y. S., & Wey, S. C. (2011). Moderating Effects in Relationship Marketing: The Roles of Customer Expertise and Price Orientation. African Journal of Business Management, 5(22), 9490-9502. Donaldson, T., & Preston, L. E. (1995). The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications. The Academy of Management Review, 20(1), 65-91. Early, A., & Chaiken, S. (1993). The Psychology of Attitudes. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Fort Worth, TX. ( Easterling, D. (2004). The Residents' Perspective in Tourism Research: A Review and Synthesis. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 17(4), 45-62. Eshliki, S. A., & Kaboudi, M. (2012). Community Perception of Tourism Impacts and their Perception in Tourism Planning: A Case Study of Ramsar, Iran. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 36, 333-341. Fredline, E., & Faulkner, B. (2000). Host Community Reactions: A Cluster Analysis. Annals of Tourism Research, 27(3), 763-784. Harrill, R., & Potts, T. D. (2003). Tourism planning in historic districts: Attitudes toward tourism development in Charleston. Journal of the American Planning Association, 69(3), 233-244. (536) Ismail, F., & Turner, L. (2008). Host and Tourist Perceptions on Small Island Tourism: A Case Study of Perhentian and Redang Islands, Malaysia. International Conference on Applied Economics. Lankford, S. V. (1994). Attitudes and Perceptions towards Tourism and Rural Regional Development. Journal of Travel Research, 32(4), 35-43. Lee, T. H. (2013). Influence Analysis of Community Resident Support for Sustainable Tourism Development. Tourism Management, 34, 37-46. Lindberg, K., & Johnson, R. (1997). Modeling Resident Attitudes toward Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 24(2), 402 -424. Mason, P., & Cheyne, J. (2000). Residents’ Attitudes to Proposed Tourism Development. Annals of Tourism Research, 27, 391-411. Morgan, R. M., & Hunt, S. D. (1994). The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing. Journal of Marketing, 58(3), 20-38. Murphy, P. E. (1985). Tourism: A Community Approach. London: Routledge.


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