Host Community Perceptions of Cultural Festival Tourism in a Marginalised Salt-Desert Ecosystem: Evidence from Rann-Utsav, Kachchh, Western India

Host-community perception studies now occupy a central place in sustainable tourism scholarship, yet festival-based cultural tourism in the ecologically fragile and socially marginalised regions of South Asia has received strikingly little attention. We address this gap by examining how residents of the buffer villages of the Rann-Utsav carnival a state-organised event held each winter on the White Rann of Kachchh (Gujarat, India) assess the economic, socio-cultural, and environmental effects of tourism. The study draws on a cross-sectional, mixed-methods design. Quantitative data come from 83 purposively sampled respondents across four Banni villages (Dhordo, Bhirandiyara, Hodako, and Gorevali), gathered through an instrument designed and administered via KoboCollect Toolbox during November 2025 to February 2026. Semi-structured interviews with key informants supplied interpretive depth. Residents strongly acknowledged economic gains, particularly the growth of micro-enterprises and wage work in handicrafts, hospitality, and transport, and they reported marked socio-cultural revitalisation—above all, the recovery of intangible cultural heritage. At the same time, they identified clear negative externalities: parking pressure, congestion, waste accumulation, and a rising cost of living. Chi-square analysis shows that occupation, not gender, is significantly associated with how residents view tourism's effect on local business. The findings extend festival-tourism scholarship by showing that in resource-frontier ecosystems hosting globally iconic events, perceptions of benefit and burden coexist along the lines of economic dependence rather than demographic identity. We draw out the implications for distributive equity, community-based tourism, and carrying-capacity governance.