An assessment of Socio–Economic determinants of Local Tourism industry development in Tanzania:

Abstract

The study assessed determinants of local tourism development in Tanzania with reference to Tarangire National Park as the inqiry case.The study was guided by eight predicting variables, namely Income, Promotion, Accessibility, Education, Age, Gender, Marital Status and Household size. The dicriptive study design was used for generating information to fill the study gap by means of questionnaire, direct observation, interviews and focus group discussions. The results were collected from the participants as employees, local visitors and tour guides from the sample of 124 respondents and 10 key informants using a structured questinnaire. The collected facts from field were computed in the SPSS data sheet to generate relevant statistics to present the results, whereas inferential analysis using logistic regression was used to describe the relationship between study variables. On investigating socio economic determinants of local tourism development in Tarangire National Park, findings revealed that Income, Promotion and Accessibility were positive and statistically significant on local visitors visiting Tarangire National Park. The study recommends that local visitors participation in local tourism development is influenced by Income, promotion and accessibility of the tourists honey ports