A STUDY ON PARTICIPATION OF THE CUCHI COMMUNITY IN TOURISM BUSINESS BY KAP SURVEY

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A STUDY ON PARTICIPATION OF THE CUCHI COMMUNITY
IN TOURISM BUSINESS BY KAP SURVEY
Nguyen Thi Hai, Associate Prof., PhD
Bui Cam Phuong, MA
Department of Vietnamese Studies
Tóm tắt: KAP (kiến thức, thái độ và thực tiễn) là kĩ thuật thu thập, đánh giá ba loại
thông tin cơ bản để giúp nắm bắt được vị trí của cộng đồng trong một vấn đề có liên quan
đến người dân trong một địa bàn nào đó. Chính vì vậy nó được sử dụng khá rộng rãi trong
các vấn đề nghiên cứu y tế cộng đồng không chỉ ở nước ngoài mBuià cả ở Việt Nam. Tuy
nhiên kĩ thuật này chưa được sử dụng trong nghiên cứu du lịch. Bài báo giới thiệu kết quả
khảo sát, phân tích dữ liệu điều tra 345 mẫu được tiến hành thu thập ở khu di tích cách mạng
địa đạo Củ Chi trong năm 2013. Kết quả khảo sát đã giúp xác định được khoảng cách (gaps)
giữa các yếu tố điều tra KAP, đây sẽ là căn cứ quan trọng để đề xuất các giải pháp phát triển
du lịch cộng đồng tại địa bàn.
Từ khóa: community participation, tourism survey, KAP, Cu Chi, Vietnam.
INTRODUCTION
Sustainable tourism, in general, and community-based tourism in particular, have been
the optimist choice of tourism development in many developing countries, including Vietnam.
Researches on community and its participation in tourism development, though old-fashioned,
have never stopped being a hot-debated area among tourism researchers in Vietnam.
However, up to present, not many of such researches introduce a standardized procedure for
tourism survey on this topic. The lack of methods raises questions about the systematic,
objective, and scientific nature of the results. In this context, KAP survey seems to be an
appropriate solution to deal with the rather subjective issue, the people's perception.
Following Gitar Bamezai (2012) KAP survey was first done in the field of family
planning and population studies in the 1950s. Then, it has been applied for advocacy,
communication and social mobilization (ACSM) strategy planning for Community Health,

HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, etc. The WTO has issued many guidelines to develop KAP survey.
One of typical KAP studies has been a project implemented by the Mongolia's Ministry of
Health in order to find out factors of indoor air quality and its relationship with respiratory
symptoms where the children suffering from bronchitis is 5–15 times higher in Ulaanbaatar
than in rural areas.
In Vietnam, the UNICEF has been the first organization to apply the KAP survey on
the issue of social inclusion for children with disabilities in the provinces of AnGiang and
DongNai in 2011 (Trinh Tung (2011). The main objective of this study is to suggest solutions
for developing communication strategies and social support for children with disabilities in
Vietnam. Other applications of KAP survey are focused on health community studies such as
by Alison Dexter et al. (2009), Nguyen Vu Quoc Binh (2010), Nguyen Thi Ngoc Ha
(1999), Nguyen Phuong Hoa (1999) Toan Nguyen et al. (2007) , … Rarely a paper dealing
with KAP survey applied in tourism industry has been found.

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METHODOLOGY
The application of KAP has been implemented in five stages: 1) Identifying the
objective of the research; 2) Outlining the process of survey; 3) Developing the questionnaire;
4) Doing pilot survey and real survey; and 5) Analyzing the data.
The number of sample is identified based on the formula:
Nz
2
pq
n= in which: N: the population; z: the distribution,
N + z
2
pq

With the estimated population of tourism participators of 700 to 900, the number of
sample is calculated to be 260 (with level of confidence 95%, p=0.5, q=1-p). In fact, we had
delivered 300 questionnaires, and collected 254, which are fully answered.
The questions on the questionnaire are conducted into four parts. The first part
includes questions about demographical characteristics of the interviewees. The second, third,
and fourth parts successively convey questions on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices
(participation activities) of the interviewees. Most of them are multiple choices. Before the
survey was done, they had been discussed among professionals.
The survey was then conducted with trained interviewers and selected interviewees to
reduce bias. After that, the collected data was processed and analyzed into defined tables for
the suggestion part. This paper makes a contribution to the tourism studies by adopting the
KAP survey technique into community participation researches which, as far as we have
studied, has never been applied before.
Based on SMART principle, the authors have developed questions for a questionnaire
on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of participants in tourism in three villages near the
Cuchi Heritage Site, namely An Phu, Phu My Hung, An Nhon Tay. Following solutions have
been suggested based on the found gaps between these three dimensions, i.e. between
Knowledge and Attitude, and between Attitude and Practices.
RESULTS
The characteristics of participants in tourism industry
Of the 254 interviewees, 79.2% are villagers living in the surroundings of Cuchi
tunnels, while the others are those permanently living in other provinces but doing business
here. The interviewees are 60 years old or over (27.95%). Female outnumbers male by 58.3%
to 41.7%. Concerned the education of interviewees, the rate of illiterate people and of
undergraduates are similar 14.57%, showing an unexpectedly high rate of uneducated and a
low rate of high educated population compared to the general population as figured by the
statistics.
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Figure 1. Educational level of respondents
The community's knowledge
The knowledge of community-based tourism
The two questions conveying the community's knowledge about community-based
tourism (CBT). The first asked about the definition, and the second the meaning of CBT. Just
above one-third (35.0%) could have the right answer for the first, while that of the second is
over 70%. There is a notably high rate of interviewees who answered them as "I do not know"
(12.2% for the first and 13.4% for the second). The results indicate that a majority of the
participants, who may know the term or not, are quite aware of the economic opportunities the
CTB deems to bring; while, on the other hand, a minority of the population take part in
tourism business spontaneously with either concern or knowledge of tourism and CBT.

Figure 2. Respondents’ knowledge about tourism and CBT
The community's knowledge of their historic site
Among the next six questions on the community's knowledge of the site, which are
conducted to be rather concrete and difficult for outsiders, numbers of people having the right
answer for each question are lowest at 55.91% and highest at 72.83%. The figures of "I do not
know" or "I do not remember" answers are consequently low, below 10% in most cases.
These statistics imply that participants have good knowledge of the place, despite the high
illiterate rate mentioned above.
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Figure 3. Respondents’ knowledge about Cuchi
The community's attitude
The next seven questions unveil the community's attitude towards their Heritage Site

(the question 13th) and their tourists (the questions 14th to 19th). Results show that almost all
participants are proud of the historic value of the site (88.98%), and are willing to welcome
guests (79.13%) as well as to take part in more tourism-related activities (89.76%). For the
question on bad behaviors toward tourists such as surcharging much more expensive than the
ordinary price, 49.21% are "against" and 25.59% are "totally against". It can be interpreted
that participants are highly aware of the cost of bad attitudes toward tourists. In other words,
we could have a good background for building tourism business "culture", which may still be
a big problem for many other provinces in Vietnam.
Table 1. Attitude of the respondents
Questions
Answers
Number
of choice
Percentage
All Vietnamese know about Cuchi?
Sure
226
88.98%

Not sure
19
7.48%

I don’t know
9
3.54%
Do you want more visitors to come
here?
Sure
201

79.13%

Like this time is enough
40
15.75%

Less than this time
13
5.12%
Do you want your family members to do
tourism business?
Sure
228
89.76%

No
26
10.24%

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The community's participation activities in community-based tourism
The last group of questions concerns the current activities as well as the desire for
participation in CBT. Asked about whether they would introduce their heritage site to tourists,
an amazingly high number (43.3%) of interviewees said they could not even they wished to. It
may be a result of low educated rate, lack of foreign language. Thus, it is not surprising that
almost all of them (79.53%) are willing to participate in training courses and alike.
Table 2. Respondents’ tourism business

Question and answers
Number
of choice
Percentage
What’s your kind of business
here?
242
95,28%
Tour guide
28
11,02%
Mototaxi driver
53
20,87%
Homestay
22
8,66%
Bars
91
35,83%
Restaurant
18
7,09%
Souvernir seller
16
6,30%
Guest house
14
5,51%
About the main activities that they participated in, the highest rate (35.83%) falls in

small business selling stuffs and snacks and etc; the second and third are in xe-om (motor-taxi
driving), and local tour guide. A much lower number (8.66%) comes for home-stay business,
but individual interviews show that those people almost lack necessary facilities to host the
guests. Moreover, collected data also confirm the hypothesis that community's participation in
CTB is poor in quality and limited in activities as well as in the number of participants.
DISCUSSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
The results above point out the gaps between community's knowledge, attitude and
practices in CBT. The first gap is between their knowledge and attitude. This gap can be divided
into smaller groups to give solutions more concrete. For example, the first group are those who
have knowledge and good attitude but do not have skills to realize their wish to participate in
tourism activities. Although they are very proud of their places and have many stories to tell
about their beloved land, a lower than half of them are enough confident to put them into
beneficial and meaningful activities for tourism business. Thus, the solution for this group is to
create and urge them to participate in small training courses like communication skills, tour
guide skills, language courses, professional talks, etc. For the group who have good attitude but
lack of knowledge, the solution for them is to encourage them to take a more proactive part in
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community's activities. For other groups who have neither information nor knowledge, more
education activities should be promoted through local mass media, and in public halls.
Particularly, guiding classes for CBT should be widely spread among most groups.
The second gap is between their attitude and practices. It is the result of the lack of
financial and political support. In this sense, local government should take an initiate part.
First and foremost, they should consider to open a guiding meetings, in order to understand
their people's difficulties, and support their needs as well as to guide them as a master planner.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the development of community-based tourism in particular and
sustainable tourism in general still needs advanced steps of researches. The paper is a humble

contribution of authors to improve the objective and scientific nature of community's
perception survey by introducing a rather new technique of so-called KAP survey. The data
collected from the survey in Cuchi tunnels, one of the Heritage Sites of Vietnam, pictured the
current situation in people's mind through three dimensions: Knowledge, Attitude, and
Practices. The gaps found out between these dimensions are different between each group of
locals, suggesting more concrete and appropriate solutions for better tourism management.
Nevertheless, this research is, of course, never a faultlessness, and all kinds of comments will
be greatly welcomed for better applications of KAP survey in tourism in the future.
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PHÂN TÍCH NĂNG LỰC CỦA CỘNG ĐỒNG TRONG PHÁT TRIỂN DU LỊCH Ở CỦ
CHI THÔNG QUA KHẢO SÁT KIẾN THỨC VÀ HÀNH VI
PGS.TS Nguyễn Thị Hải
ThS. Bùi Cẩm Phượng
Bộ môn Việt Nam học
Tóm tắt: KAP (kiến thức, thái độ và thực tiễn) là kĩ thuật thu thập, đánh giá ba loại
thông tin cơ bản để giúp nắm bắt được vị trí của cộng đồng trong một vấn đề có liên quan
đến người dân trong một địa bàn nào đó. Chính vì vậy nó được sử dụng khá rộng rãi trong
các vấn đề nghiên cứu y tế cộng đồng không chỉ ở nước ngoài mà cả ở Việt Nam. Tuy nhiên kĩ

thuật này chưa được sử dụng trong nghiên cứu du lịch. Bài báo giới thiệu kết quả khảo sát,
phân tích dữ liệu điều tra 345 mẫu được tiến hành thu thập ở khu di tích cách mạng địa đạo
Củ Chi trong năm 2013. Kết quả khảo sát đã giúp xác định được khoảng cách giữa các yếu tố
điều tra KAP, đây sẽ là căn cứ quan trọng để đề xuất các giải pháp phát triển du lịch cộng
đồng tại địa bàn.