Sustainability of Rural Land Use Based on an Integrated Tourism Model in Mae Kampong Village, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand

Abstract

This paper recreates an appropriate tourism model to sustain rural land use in Mae Kampong village, Chiang Mai province, Thailand. The study focuses on the village’s current land use and existing tourism management. The data, collected by interview and field observation, were analyzed and compared with tourism trends in the area for modification into an integrated tourism model for sustainable rural land use. In this paper, the sustainability of rural land use is shown to derive from the maintenance and increase of community capital, including natural, human, social, financial or built, and cultural capital. These categories of capital can also be comparably merged with four elements of rural land use sustainability, ecological, economic, social, and cultural sustainability as a conceptual framework for an integrated tourism model. Land use in Mae Kampong village can be sustained by the existing tourism management model, which has been integrated mainly by community-based tourism and ecotourism. Recently, however, long-stay tourism and health tourism have arisen with the possibility of creating new resources and generating new wealth from tourism and rural land use, such as an increase in rental houses and resort hotels, the development of health products from forest tea, and the organic local food served to tourists in homestays. The recreated tourism model, therefore, is integrated by four types of tourism, community-based, long-stay, health, and ecotourism, so as to achieve a higher living standard which attributed the overall rural land use sustainability to four components of its sustainability.