Using Cultural Consensus Analysis to Assess Tourism Impacts among Whitewater Rafting Participants in Nepal William

Roger Van De Berg
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

It is critical in tourism research to understand just how communities are impacted by tourism operations. However, at what scale do we consider our community to be and which communities do we consider as important in our analyses? Using cultural consensus modeling, which was originally developed as a cognitive methodology used to understand the concept of cultural coherence within a particular population, this project compared and contrasted the perceptions of company owners and office staff, rafting guides, clientele and local villagers involved in the Nepali whitewater rafting industry on a whole host of issues related to tourism impacts, benefit dispersal and potential conflicts that may occur due to riverine development policies of the government of Nepal. Cultural consensus surveying allows for researchers to use dichotomous pair choice questions to discern informant's knowledge or perceptions on issues of interest to social research. This is very valuable when comparing across groups of participants with the purpose of understanding where agreements and disagreements may lie in regard to what the perceived costs and benefits are to each group of participants.