Sustainable Rural Tourism: A Social Transformation of Rural Area

Abstract

The study focuses on presenting social transformation through quality of life led by sustainable rural tourism. Social transformation is a tenacious and erratic process pointing towards the society’s changes from ascribed status to achieved status. It is not brought in frontline of the research field of tourism, especially, of sustainable rural tourism and quality of life. This paper has selected three rural areas of Bangladesh as a study area where structured questionnaire survey has piloted among local communities who live there for more than three years. One hypothesis was developed regarding the effects of sustainable rural tourism on the quality of life demographically in selected study areas. This study paper has designed to find how sustainable tourism changes a society in rural area from sociocultural, economical, and environmental aspects. The revolution of sustainability of these three dimensions reflects a quality of life of a society. The result has revealed that rural society has experienced economic growth, infrastructural development, social empowerment, cultural preservation, environmental preservation and conservation, and social awareness. It also shows that sustainable rural tourism and social transformation is sharing a favorable relationship in terms of the three pillars of sustainability. It is evident for certain, sustainable tourism development in rural area improves the quality of life and advances the spatial development.