TOURISM AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO HOUSEHOLDS’ INCOME IN KONSO ZONE, SNNP REGION, ETHIOPIA

Tourism is becoming an increasingly important source of revenue and employment for both emerging and wealthy countries. It has long been considered one of the key components of the strategy for economic development. Despite extensive research in the field of tourism, studies on the contribution of tourism to households’ income have been limited. Hence, this study investigated tourism and its contribution to households’ income and examined the factors affecting the tourism income of households using the descriptive and Tobit regression models, respectively. A cross-sectional data set was collected from 192 randomly selected households using interviews and focused group discussions. The study revealed that the contribution of tourism to household income is low—only 3.87 percent. The study also pinpointed cultural landscapes, arts, and cultural music as the main tourist destinations. The Tobit model estimation result revealed that the age of the household head, family size of the household, and access to credit have a strong positive effect on household tourism income, whereas land size is negatively correlated with household tourism income. Finally, the study revealed that limited access to financing, lack of preservation and protection of heritage, lack of museums, lack of service and facilities, lack of effective marketing, internal conflict, and inadequate development and implementation of strategies were the major challenging factors that affect the tourism industry. Hence, promotion, expanding employment opportunities, access to formal credit, preserving potential heritages, and adequate development and implementation of strategies were recommended to improve the tourism industry in the study area. Keywords: Tourism; Tourism income; Konso; Standard Tobit