Barriers influencing the sustainable development of community-based tourism (CBT): evidence from Ciaotou heritage village in Taiwan

Purpose In recent years, community-based tourism (CBT) in the global market has been combined with specific themes in order to establish various tourism activities. Relatively few studies have comprehensively investigated how this type of CBT should be developed. Therefore, this study takes CBT with festival themes combined with community characteristics as a case study, which explores what obstacles exist in CBT with a combination of community characteristics – the industrial history of sugar factories and external themes, such as, formal flower displays. Design/methodology/approach The thematic analysis is employed for data analysis of interviews. All interview participants were stakeholders. Findings This study identifies five types of obstacles: policy-related, environmental-related, innovation-related, industry-related and communication-related. Based on these findings, it is vital to consider both community and other characteristics of CBT. At the same time, after evaluating the rational perceptions of different stakeholders within the same type of obstacle, this study proposes a more specific and comprehensive development strategies for CBT. Originality/value To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study of community agricultural tourism which collected the viewpoints of different stakeholders – tourists, residents, community associations, local businesses and the government. This study employs in-depth analysis of external policies and environmental and agricultural factors to discover and develop relevant coping strategies and implications.