Local Peoples’ Perceptions Towards The Socio-Economic Impacts of Coastal Tourism: A Case Study of Digha-Shankarpur Planning Area in West Bengal, India

This study is an attempt to understand the impact of coastal tourism on local socio-economic development. Perceptions or opinions of local people or residence are recognised as valuable components to assess the impact of any kind of tourism development activities in a specific area. Digha-Shankarpur Planning Area is famous for its beach tourism, which is considered as coastal tourism in this study. Various planning and policy have been taken to promote local development through tourism in this area. A five point Likert Scale is used as the response format to measure the socio-economic impact of coastal tourism. A t-test was conducted to measure the respondent's agreement or disagreement with a particular statement related to impact of coastal tourism and mean scores obtained by each groups were worked out and subjected to ANOVA. The findings of this study indicate that local peoples of the study area perceived both positive and negative socio-economic impacts of coastal tourism development and there are statistically significant differences of perceptions among the groups, which indicating the complex dynamics of coastal tourism development in the study area.