Citation
Mohd Noor, Mohd Iqbal
(2018)
Environmental and social assessments of an Island Marine Park in Malaysia.
Doctoral thesis, Universiti Putra Malaysia.
Abstract
This study addresses issues and constraints faced by managing tourism development
inside Marine Protected Areas in Malaysia by focusing on Tioman Island Marine Park
as case study sites. With increasing number of tourist arrivals and greater tourism
development in the area, issues of sustainability of Tioman Island Marine Park might
be put into questions. The conflict between tourism development and environmental
sustainability in Malaysia Marine Parks is getting complicated when some tourism
stakeholders believe that the governing policy of the parks are not tailored for their
demands to achieve competitive advantage and this might burden the management of
protected areas. This problem is addressed by applying three essays that cover three
objectives. The general objective of this study is to assess tourism impact on
environment and social behaviour in Tioman Island Marine Parks. The first essay
assesses the impact of tourism activities in Tioman Island Marine Park by using Life
Cycle Assessment theory. The results of each assessment case indicated that
transportation to/from the island, accommodation, snorkeling act ivities, and waterfall
trekking activities leave negative impacts on human health, ecosystem quality and
resources. The advantages of Life Cycle Assessment method include it offers a
rational and comprehensive approach to evaluate the environmental impacts in every
stage of a product's system. The second essays purpose is to reveal the current social
network of stakeholders, interests, and participation in marine protected areas by
applying Social Network Analysis. The study site covers three villages in Tioman
Island Marine Park, Malaysia and the stakeholders are representatives from tourism
distribution channel of Tioman Island Marine Park. The social network study focused
on the discrete ties patterns for these villages and how these patterns can be used to
manage the tourism network for the island. Network maps can help policy makers and
implementing agency in planning and monitoring changes in tourism suppliers’
arrangements by providing a unique methodological frame for collecting and
organizing data. Finally, the third essays aim to investigate the relationship between social capital dimensions and environmental behavior in marine parks and to examine
the impact of cultural capital in mediating the relationship between social capital and
environmental behavior. Data for this study were gathered from 124 respondents from
the tourism distribution channel of Tioman Island Marine Park. The overall research
process took over a year, in the month of May to August 2015 and June to August in
2016. The findings revealed positive effects of social capital and cultural capital on
environmental behavior. The combination of these three essays proves that tourism
development has different impacts on Marine Protected Areas management and its
implementation. The research findings could help the government and policy planners
by offering important inputs for policy direction in reviewing and analysing the
possible impact of existing policies on Marine Park conservation. The contribution of
this study in shaping the future of society depends on how policymakers, intellectuals,
economic agents, and citizens will decide to orient research and use its results.
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