Community Participation in Project Cycle Management and Sustainability of Ecotourism Enterprise Development Projects in Meru County, Kenya

Abstract

Discussion on the sustainability of development projects is a never-ending phenomenon, attracting attention from policy maker, decision makers, project management practitioners, academicians and even those who benefit from sustainable projects. Nevertheless, sustainability drivers are yet to be affirmed with a lot of research focusing on this subject. Looked at from the broader perspective, sustainability has taken a metamorphosis over time. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of community participation in project cycle management and sustainability of eco-tourism enterprise development projects in Meru County, Kenya. The following goals served as a guide for the study: To determine the impact of community invol vement in project implementation on the sustainability of ecotourism enterprise projects in Meru County, Kenya, to evaluate the impact of community involvement in project planning on the sust ainability of ecotourism enterprise projects in Meru County, Kenya, and to establish the impact o f community participation in project initiation on the sustainability of ecotourism enterprise proje cts in Meru County, Kenya and to investigate the community participation in monitoring and evaluation on sustainability of ecotourism enterprise projects in Meru County, Kenya. The target population was based on project beneficiaries who are organized in User groups. There were 294 members from 6 user groups. Membership was spread across the project area and included men and women. In addition to this, Board members, tour guides, the management and community project contact people were targeted. Data collected from respondents were sorted, cleaned, and coded appropriately to allow data entry and analysis. Clean data was entered to the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (SPSS) software that was used to generate data outputs for interpretation presentation and discussions. The SPSS was used for data analyses and outputs such as Mean, Standard Deviation, Percentages, and Frequencies.