Community-Based Tourism, Livelihood Transformation, and Rural Sustainability: A Sustainable Livelihood Framework Analysis of Mae Kampong, Thailand

บทคัดย่อ

Community-based tourism (CBT) has been increasingly promoted as an approach to supporting sustainable rural development through livelihood diversification, community participation, and the utilization of local resources. However, much of the existing literature remains focused primarily on economic outcomes and tourism performance indicators, while paying comparatively limited attention to the structural processes through which tourism reshapes household livelihoods and influences long-term rural sustainability. This study examines these relationships through a case study of Mae Kampong. Drawing on the Sustainable Livelihood Framework and the concept of community capital transformation, it conceptualizes CBT as a process that reorganizes natural, economic, social, cultural, and human capital, and connects these transformations to changes in household livelihood strategies and rural sustainability outcomes. The study adopts a qualitative documentary approach based on an analysis of academic literature, previous studies, policy documents, and secondary sources relating to CBT and Mae Kampong. The findings indicate that CBT has substantially transformed household livelihood systems within the community. Tourism-related activities—including homestay services, local guiding, food and beverage businesses, and the sale of local products—contributed to livelihood diversification and reduced exclusive dependence on agriculture and forest-based livelihoods. The integration of tourism into household economies enhanced livelihood flexibility and strengthened adaptive capacity in response to economic and environmental uncertainty. However, the findings also reveal that tourism benefits are distributed unevenly among households, with greater advantages concentrated among those possessing stronger economic resources, favorable locations, and better access to tourism-related opportunities. These inequalities create structural tensions that challenge the community's long-term sustainability. The study further demonstrates that tourism generates multidimensional impacts on community capital. Tourism has strengthened local economic activities and reinforced certain forms of social capital through participatory management structures and collective governance mechanisms. At the same time, it has contributed to cultural commodification pressures, social differentiation, and increasing environmental stress on fragile mountain ecosystems due to growing tourist numbers and resource-use intensity. The findings suggest that CBT functions simultaneously as both a supporting force and a structural challenge for rural sustainability. Sustainable outcomes do not emerge automatically from tourism development alone; rather, they depend on effective local governance, equitable benefit distribution, community participation, adaptive capacity, and the long-term management of relationships among the economic, social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of rural development.