Table 5.3 describes the demographic data of respondents from the survey in Koh Samet. The respondents of this survey are local residents, either natives or migrants who lived in this community at the time of fieldwork. The number of the sample at Koh Samet is 7010 (See Chapter 3).
10
Sample size for the 10% precision level where the confidence level is 95% and the degree of variability (P) = 0.5
Table 5.3 Demographic data of Koh Samet sample
Demographic data Answer Samet (%)
Born in Village (Native residents)
Yes 25.7
No 74.3
Length of residence for migrant residents (years) 13.14
Gender
Male 38.6
Female 61.4
Number of household members (persons) 3.94
Age (Years) 21-73 Age range ≤ 20 0 21-30 17 31-40 34 41-50 33 51-60 13 ≥ 60 3 Occupation
Small business owners 68.6
Employee 15.7
Agriculture & Fishery 2.9
Part time hires 2.9
Others 10.0
Average Household Income (Baht/year) 355,875
Minimum Household Income (Baht/year) 96,000
Maximum Household Income (Baht/year) 1,200,000
As is apparent from Table 5.3, only one quarter of respondents in this survey were born in the village. However, average length of residence for migrant residents is 13.14 years which suggests these migrants are not short term residents. Most of the people surveyed were engaged with the tourism industry with the main occupation being small business owner (68.6%). The survey results are consistent with the interview of a village headman, who reported that more than 80 percent of the residents on Koh Samet are involved with tourism businesses either directly or indirectly (interview with a village headman, September 4, 2008). Those directly involved in tourism provide services directly to tourists, for example, through accommodation facilities and convenience and souvenir shops. People who are not directly involved or not involved in these tourism businesses are fishermen, grocery and food sellers to residents, fresh water suppliers to hotels and resorts and freelance workers. Generally, the residents on Koh Samet have their own small businesses such as bungalows, guesthouses, restaurants, boat services and motorcycle rental
the survey result reports a substantial high level of household income of the
respondents with an average of 355,875 baht per year (1.4 times higher than the 2009 national average household income (NSO, 2011)).
This research considered whether there might be different opinions about participation in tourism development and its impacts between the native and migrant respondents in this community; thus, crosstabulation analysis was conducted; the Chi-Square testing results are presented in Table 5.4.
Table 5.4 Differences between native and migrant respondents‟ opinion on tourism development and its impacts
Opinions about participation in tourism development and its impacts
Differences between native and migrant respondents
Participating in communal activities Not different
Individual participation in tourism development Not different
Tourism disturbs local way of life Different
Tourism improves basic infrastructure Different
Tourism assists cultural conservation Not different
Tourism improves the well-being of household Different
There is a fair and equitable benefit distribution Not different
Tourism leads to environmental degradation; Not different
The overall satisfaction on tourism development. Not different
Note: See detail in Appendix D
The results reveal that most of these issues were not different between native and migrant respondents except three issues including „tourism disturbs local way of life‟, „tourism improves basic infrastructure‟ and „tourism improves the household well- being‟. The different opinion on „tourism disturbs local way of life‟ might be relating to the native residents mostly living in Ao Noi Na, the less dense tourism area. The different opinion on „tourism improves basic infrastructure‟ may be due to the native residents are used to living on the island with a low level of basic infrastructure before tourism has emerged whereas the migrant residents who mostly migrated from the mainland and had never seen Koh Samet in the past may not recognise the difference
that tourism has made improving island. The last different issue of „tourism improves the household well-being‟ may be due to most native residents are business owners and gaining higher income than the migrant residents who are mostly employees in tourism businesses.
In addition, this research also analysed whether there are different opinions about the above issues between male and female respondents. The results are presented in Table 5.5.
Table 5.5 Differences between male and female respondents‟ opinion on tourism development and its impacts in Koh Samet
Opinions about participation in tourism development and its impacts
Differences between male and female respondents
Individual participation in tourism development Not different
Tourism disturbs local way of life Not different
Tourism improves basic infrastructure Not different
Tourism assists cultural conservation Different
Tourism improves the well-being of household Not different
There is a fair and equitable benefit distribution Not different
Tourism leads to environmental degradation; Not different
The overall satisfaction on tourism development. Not different
Note: See detail in Appendix E.1
Similarly, most of the results reported that there was no different opinion about participation in tourism development and tourism impacts between male and female respondents in Koh Samet. Only „tourism assists cultural conservation‟ was found different. Most of the female respondents disagreed with this statement while most of male respondents were neutral to this statement. This may be due to generally male are less interested in this issue than female.
The next section discusses negative impacts from tourism at Koh Samet. It is important to investigate tourism impacts occurring in the community because these impacts are largely an outcome of tourism planning and operation. This section
focuses only negative tourism impacts because the positive impacts are considered as benefits from tourism; they are discussed in Section 5.6.3.