ATTITUDE OF LOCAL COMMUNITIES TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT, THE CASE OF NECH SAR NATIONAL PARK, ETHIOPIA

Community attitude towards sustainable tourism are critical to community involvement and tourism development. The purpose of this research is to describe the attitude of local communities towards sustainable tourism development and examine the reliability and validity of the sustainable tourism attitude scale (SUS-TAS). Descriptive research design is used with quantitative approach in order to address research objective. A household survey was conducted to collect data from respondents. Respondents are selected using a stratifiedrandom sampling technique. Data are collected using a structured questionnaire. Sustainable tourism attitude scale (SUS-TAS) is used as a basis for analyzing local communities? attitude towards sustainable tourism development. Principal components analysis (PCA) with a varimax rotation was performed to delineate the dimensions of the sustainable tourism attitude scale. Among seven factors community members showed agreement to six factors of sustainable tourism development. This study supports the premise that sustainable tourism attitude scale is a reliable and valid instrument to measure residents? attitudes toward sustainable tourism development.