ABSTRACT

This work evaluated the socio-cultural impact of tourism development on lives of host communities of Osun Oshogbo scared grove. Socio-cultural impacts of tourism are basically the consequences of either the development of the tourism industry or the presence of tourists in the destination. These impacts occur as a result of interaction between the host and the tourists. The objectives of the research were to identify the various attractions in the destination, evaluate the ways the destination has affected the social and cultural lives of the host communities and to determine how the impacts have affected the sustainability of local social and cultural lives of the host communities. The hypotheses of the study were: Tourism development has no significant effect on the socio-cultural lives of the host communities and Tourism development has no significant effect on the sustainability of the socio-cultural lives of the host communities. Data for this research was generated using qualitative and quantitative techniques. Simple frequency percentages, mean and Analysis of variance (ANOVA) derived from regression analysis were used to analyse the data generated for the study. The findings of the analysis proved that tourism development had significant effect on the socio-cultural lives of the host communities (F cal 3 '24 > Ftab1.94) and tourism development had significant effect on the sustainability of the socio-cultural lives of the host communities (F cal 5.563> F tab 1 .94) at 5% level of significance. The empirical survey revealed that the null hypothesis was not true. This implies that tourism has a significant effect on the socio-cultural lives and the sustainability of the sôcio-cultural lives of the host communities. Public participation must be encouraged by tourism developers and planners to ensure the sustainability of tourism development in the community. In conclusion, it is important that standard socio-cultural frameworks must be established at the development stages to preserve and protect social and cultural values of Nigerian people most especially of the host communities.