Development of knowledge and participation of communities surrounding three historical park towards Thailand sustainable historical tourism

The objective was to develop knowledge of members of communities surrounding Sukhothai, Si Satchanalai, and Kamphaeng Phet Historical Park towards Thailand sustainable historical tourism. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected. Data was analyzed using content analysis and descriptive statistics. At significance level 0.05 showed that people surrounding the three historical parks had knowledge of itinerary and tourist sites in good level, followed by knowledge of sustainable historical tourism, and facilities which were in the moderate level; people in the three locations lacked of English knowledge only. The analysis of the possibility of perceiving information and behavior of the members towards the sustainable historical tourism in the three historical parks indicated that the major problem leading to the difficulty in developing sustainable historical tourism was English language knowledge and income of community members. Therefore, the researcher organized the training projects to develop English language knowledge and promote income to people surrounding the three historical parks to recognize the abstract and factual value of culture and to strengthen sustainable historical tourism. The training projects with the statistical significance 0.05 illustrated that the participants from the three historical parks had better knowledge of English and income generating than before having training.