Abstract
Diving tourism has grown rapidly to attract many people whose interest lies in underwater recreational activities for seeing the marine creature in Taiwan, such as Ludao, Lanyu, and Penghu. Although diving tourism can bring economic benefits, improve quality of life at the coastal community, and increase the visibility of the destination. The development of diving tourism can have adverse impact on marine ecosystem and coastal environment. Furthermore, as tourism develops, substantial socio-economic and environmental costs become more explicit. Therefore, it is urgent and important to manage diving tourism to minimize its impact on coastal environment. The concepts of sustainable tourism development (STD) was adopted in this study. Using Delphi method to gain the key factors, and then constructed hierarchical structure and analyzed their priority of each factor by analytic hierarchy process (AHP). These factors in this study were classified into four aspects, including governance, physical environment, diving behavior, and socio-economic. The results represent that tourists’ behavior and awareness is the most important aspects because the behaviors of divers bring huge damage for corals if they step on coral, touch, or hit by loose equipment. Overall these important factors of the study are tourist management, feasible marine spatial planning, integrated management, effective communication and coordination, wastewater management, economic benefit, fair distribution and marine protected area. This study provides managers to understand their priority of each factor that can help to design effective strategies for sustainable development of diving tourism.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Tourism and Leisure Industries
KEYWORDS
Scuba Diving, Sustainable Tourism Development, Coral Reef, Delphi Method, AHP
