Impacts of Tourism Development on Residents’ Quality of Life: Efficacy of Community Capitals in Gateway Communities, Northern Tanzania

This study examined the structural relationship involving residents’ perception of tourism impacts embedded on material and non-material community capitals, satisfaction, quality of life and whether residents support for further tourism development. Multi method approach was employed to collect data. Focus group discussion with key informants coupled with trend data on wealth, tourism receipts and expenditure complemented the household survey. The hypothesized structural model was empirically tested, involving a randomly selected sample of 408 agro-pastoral residents from three gateway communities; Loliondo, lake Natron and Burrunge in northern Tanzania. It was found that residents support for further tourism development is a function of favourable perceived quality of life, influenced by residents’ satisfaction with both material impacts (i.e. increase in physical and financial capital) and non-material impacts (e.g. devolution of power to community and social-cultural cohesion). However, despite positive tourism impacts observed, residents endure costs in land-use in terms of restricted grazing and cultivation in order to sustain tourism. The study drew conclusion that community capital framework extends the traditional tripartite tourism impacts (i.e. economic, social and environment) to other aspects such as: political, cultural, human and built-capital, thus, provide a thorough understanding about tourism impacts in predicting residents’ quality of life. Future studies should emphasize on the efficacy of community capitals in the context of tourism development and its impacts on resident’s quality of life.