Local attitudes towards conservation and tourism around Komodo National Park, Indonesia

ensuring local support for protected areas is increasingly viewed as an important element of biodiversity conversation. This is often predicted on the provision of benefits from protected areas, and a common means of providing such benefits is tourism development. However, the relationship between receipt of tourism benefits ans support for conversation has not yet been explored. This study examined local attitudes towards protected area tourism and the effects of tourism benefits on local support for Komodo National Park, Indonesia. Komodo National Park is a flagship for tourism in a region where protected areas are becoming increasingly visited and where local support for conversation has not yet been investigated. Results of a questionnaire survey revealed positive attitudes towards tourism and high support for conversation (93.7%), as well as a recognition that tourism is dependent on the existence of the the park. Positive attitudes towards tourism were positively related to the receipt of economic benefits and, and to support for conversation. However, a positive relationship between receipt of tourism benefits and support for conversation was not identified, suggesting that benefits from protected area conversation make no difference to local support for conversation. Local people recognized distributional inequalities in tourism benefits, and the most common complaints were of local inflation and tourist dress code. To fully identify the impacts of protected area tourism, long-term studies of local attitudes alongside traditional economic and ecological assessments are recommended.