FACTORS AFFECTING POTENTIAL INCREASE OF ECOTOURISM: CASE STUDY OF KOH SAMED, RAYONG PROVINCE

Abstract

Ecotourism on Koh Samed in Rayong Province relies not only on the abundance of natural resources in the area but also the accommodation services, facilities, activities, tourist attraction, and convenient transportation. These factors are incentives for tourists to visit the island, thus increasing income of the people and entrepreneurs on Koh Samed.

The objectives of this research were to: (1) examine the factors affecting the increase of ecotourism potential on Koh Samed, and (2) compare opinions about factors affecting the increase of ecotourism potential on Koh Samed classified by personal factors. Questionnaires were used to collect data from 353 Thai and foreign tourists visiting Koh Samed and received all of them back as accurate and complete, representing 100 percent response rate. The statistics used in this research were frequency, means, standard deviation, t-test and F-test.

The results showed that: 1) the opinions of Thai and foreign tourists about factors affecting the increase of ecotourism potential on Koh Samed were moderate in both overall level and each aspect, i.e., activities, tourist attraction, accommodation services and facilities and high in transportation aspect, and 2) Thai and foreign tourists of different age, marital status, education level and monthly income indicated different opinions about the factors affecting the increase of ecotourism potential on Koh Samed but no difference for respondents with different gender and career.