Local Communities Perceptions on Rural Tourism Competitive Advantage: A Study on Kampung Bako (Bako National Park), Kuching, Sarawak

Rural tourism in Malaysia has been designated as a potential segment to give a boost to the tourism industry in further up the value chain; it is also a natural and ready-made vehicle for the rural community to develop their local area economically and infrastructurally. The development of tourism destination, however, should own a capacity in maximising the competitive advantage to be effective and yet sustainable. This study examines the perspective of local community on the relationship between economic, socio-cultural, and environmental impacts on tourism, stakeholder involvement, and community tourism knowledge with rural competitive advantage. 150 residents of a rural tourism destination in Sarawak, Malaysia voluntarily took part in this study. SmartPLS 2.0 (M3) was applied, to assess the developed model, based on path modelling. Subsequently, to generate the standard error of the estimate and t-values, bootstrapping with 500 re-samples was applied. The findings suggested that stakeholder’s involvement in tourism, community support for tourism, and economic impact of tourism have had a significant positive impact on rural competitive advantage; community knowledge of tourism and environmental and socio-cultural impacts of tourism, did not have a significant impact on the same. The implications arising from these findings are then been further discussed.