Fourth International Conference on Tourism and Leisure Studies

Abstract

Heritage tourism is a multidimensional phenomenon that demands attention. Heritage tourism destinations attract heterogeneous number of players each with significantly different interests at the expense of residents. Therefore, this study assessed the impacts of heritage tourism sites on the host communities in Osun State, Nigeria. This study empirically derived data through questionnaire administration on randomly selected cultural heritage sites. Eleven (11) out of eighty eight (88) cultural heritage sites were selected using random sampling without replacement. Furthermore, 222 residents within 500 meters radius to the selected sites were selected systematically for questionnaire administration. This range was adopted because it is believed that residents within this radius will feel much impact of the activities of the heritage sites than residents beyond this distance. Findings revealed that impacts emanating from the activities tourist and residents as a result of the location of the heritage tourism sites is categorized into Social, Economic and Environmental impacts and these are both positive and negative. The study identified four attraction factors for cultural heritage tourism participants, these are: socio-economic (33.06%), service (17.75%), mobility (12.77%) and management factors (10.78%), all this factors put together accounted for 74.36% variance as evident from the result of the principal component analysis. Therefore, the implications of the findings indicated that, social vices such as increase in prostitution, traffic congestion, and noise pollution among others were prominent in the areas, hence appropriate policies that will guide the activities and interaction among the heritage tourism sites, the tourists and the residents were discussed.