Residents’ Exposure to Multiple Shocks and Coping Strategies among Tourism-Gateway Communities in Northern Tanzania

There is increasing awareness about influence of tourism development on resident’s livelihoods. Yet, studies that link tourism and residents capabilities to withstand livelihood-shocks are scant. This study was set to address this empirical gap by evaluating the extent to which tourism development has enabled resident’s access to livelihood assets capable to address multiple livelihood-shocks through coping strategies. Retrospective evaluative technique embedded on multi-method approach was used to collect data, involving 63 in-depth interviews and survey among 416 tourism beneficiaries and 425 non-beneficiary agro-pastoral households in three gateway tourism destination communities of Northern Tanzania. It was found that residents have been exposed to severe multiple shocks in the facets of ecology (i.e. drought, livestock diseases and crop riding), economic (i.e. rise in food-price and business-loss), health (i.e. chronic illness and death) and social (i.e. family conflicts and cattle-theft). In response to the shocks, tourism beneficiary households used effective shock-coping strategies, such as spending on savings and livestock selling to address the shocks. On contrary, non-beneficiaries used less effective coping strategies like remittances and they reduce consumption. The study recommends increase access to resident’s financial and human resources in building greater capabilities to handle multiple livelihood-shocks.