Tourism Stakeholders

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5.2. Tourism Stakeholders

While in Cinsbu-Xinguang there are the two churches – the Catholic Church and the Presbyterian Church, in Smangus, there is only one Church, the Presbyterian Church. This situation makes it easier to collaborate and work together. However, it seems that in Cinsbu, the activity of two different churches, and therefore less coherence in the community as a whole, makes it more complicated to mobilize people, compared to Smangus where there is only one church.

As was detailed in the chapter of the case studies, the Tnunan is currently the most important tourism stakeholder, which actually encompasses in it other stakeholders, its members. Tnunan creates equality between the different households in the community.

Although the status of elders (長老) is relevant in both Smangus and Cinsbu-Xinguang, it appears that from the perspective of tourism, the elders in Cinsbu-Xinguang play a larger role. This is because most Cinsbu-Xinguang elders are more involved in tourism – most of them own B&B, they are more skillful and more business-wise successful. Of course the elders all work for the greater good of the community, but it seems that since they are more involved from the managerial perspective of the CPR as well as in the tourism business, their role is more contrasted to other community members.

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5.3. Management of the Cypress Forest as Tourism CPR

Tang and Tang (2010) explain that institutional rules for defining resource boundaries, user rights, resource allocation rules, monitoring arrangements, conflict resolution mechanisms, etc., are supported by deep-rooted social values and belief systems passed down through generations, and not only by knowledge of the local environment, (Tang and Tang, 2010). This means that people and the social structure are key in contracting a CPR. It is not only the natural resource, people make a resource a common-pool resource.

As referred to in the theoretical background, the human behavior affects the characteristics of the resource and turn it into a common-pool resource. In the two case studies in this research, the traditional CPR of a “forest” becomes a Tourism CPR become a common-pool resource because of the development of tourism in the two communities and the dependency of tourism development and management on the cypress forest. The communities set the rules that create the CPR regime.

In both case, gaga is part of these rules. In Smangus, the rules that were added beside gaga are more encompassing and comprehensive, which affect the management of the cypress forest as tourism CPR, as explained below.

Comparing the two cases, we can see that in communities, there is a strong reliance on Atayal customary law gaga in regards to managing the Tourism CPR. Although the CPR management is in some conflict with the government regarding ownership, in both cases, the community is the de-facto manager of the CPR. The community is also working together with the government to a certain extent and in both cases calls the police for the severe sanctions of breaking the regulations.

Chen et al. (2018:388) write “as in other customary law settings, common property resource governance is not about collective ownership of particular resources; it is about sharing the responsibility and custodianship collectively under customary law.” As such, social relation are strongly embedded in the gaga and therefore in the CPR management system. This means that in modern Atayal context, managing CPRs mean sharing the responsibility over the resource. Also, the management of CPR is dynamic and not linear (Chen et al., 2018: 388-391).

What rise from the interviews and from the observation of the author, the interpretation of gaga by the residents is affected by tourism - the more the community is more involved in tourism, the more the community interpret gaga as related to tourism. As an example, in Interview #8 the author asked the interviewee if there are adaptation to gaga due to the tourism development. The

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interviewee confirmed and gave the example of the rule of no loud sound/music after 10pm, especially karaoke. This is because many B&Bs have guests that wake up early in the morning to go hiking, and loud music/singing at night will have a bad affect. When asked if this is a new adaption/adding to the gaga, the interviewee stressed that it is actually an adaption of a tradition rule of avoiding loud music at night because community members are farmers and need to wake up very early in the morning. Thus, the gaga is being adapted as well as interpreted in the new situation where tourism plays a larger role in the life of the community. However, it seems that the monitoring part (Ostrom’s 4^th element of successful CPR management) is different. In Cinsbu-Xinguang, the monitoring of the forest is done as a whole under gaga, while in Smangus, the area related to tourism is put under different monitoring.

In Cinsbu-Xinguang there is no clear and defined monitoring system. If there is a big natural event, such as typhoon, then community members will go and check the path. When community members venture into the forest area, whether guiding tourist or for other reasons, and notice any issue will either fix it immediately or inform about the issue. Also, if B&B owners hear from their customers of any issue then they will take care of it.

In contrast, in Smangus there is a clear and defined monitoring systems. Tnunan’s Ecology and Environment Department carries out inspections of the trail in a defined frequency. Of course, all other ways of monitoring like in Cinsbu-Xinguang also exist, but the defined monitoring is quite different in the two cases.

Such monitoring system might be easier to establish and execute in a solely community-owned and operated context rather than in a number of family or group-owned enterprises context, but this monitoring system can be established and executed in a separate family-owned enterprises context.

Graduated sanctions (Ostrom’s 5^th element of successful CPR management) is also different in the two communities. In Smangus, the sanctions that can be and are carried out by Tnunan pose another strong mechanism. The ability to withhold a salary from a person who has breached the regulations, is a strong act. To reach this stage, the sanction must be discussed and agreed upon by all of Tnunan members, which connects the economic and social aspects to the sanction, and as such make it more efficient.

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When comparing the questionnaire results from the two communities, we see that a similar percentage of the respondents have been involved in meetings and were informed about decisions made regarding the Tourism CPR (see figure 33 and figure 34). While in Cinsbu-Xinguang case study there were no inter-correlation between CPR satisfaction and CPR management participation, in the Smangus case study, there was a significant positive correlation between CPR management participation and perceived benefit distribution.

What might explain such difference is that since Smangus is in a stage³⁰ where both the benefit distribution is distributed in a very fair way (in absolute terms, but more importantly, it is perceived as fair) and that the management of the CPR follows Ostrom’s 7 principals, those that are involved in the CPR management know its importance to tourism, and therefore are satisfied with the distribution of benefits from tourism.

Figure 33: Involvement in meetings discussing the Tourism CPR management (Cinsbu-Xinguang and Smangus)

30 This refers to a “stage by itself” without referring to a linear development of stages. Smangus’ stage is different from Cinsbu-Xinguang. Different communities may follow the same path and reach different stages.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Yes, many times Yes, once or twice No, never

Have you been inolved in any type of meeting where you discussed the management of the Tourism CPR?

Smangus Cinsbu-Xinguang

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Figure 34: Being informed of major decisions regarding the Tourism CPR management (Cinsbu-Xinguang and Smangus)