Department of Geography

The worldwide evolution of park management has revealed the dual roles of parks in meeting nature conservation and social objectives. Sustainable tourism is able to support these roles by providing financial support to nature conservation, benefiting local communities ...

The central question addressed in this paper is whether tourists visiting a protected area are willing to pay more and what are the reasons behind such motives, so as to enhance tourism revenue in protected areas. Studies have concluded that most parks are charging fees far below what visitors are willing to pay, and thus suggest that parks charges for entrance, activities, and facilities should be increased accordingly to conform to the user-pay scheme. It has been widely recognized that reasons for willingness to pay more differ from one individual or group from another, and that the most noticeable factors are related to the various perceptions held by an individual/group of what a protected area should be and what it offers, as well as the roles it plays. These perceptions are captured within the nexus of visitor backgrounds. For the purposes of this paper, the authors focus on foreign visitors. How pre-existing perceptions of a protected area “is supposed to be” influence willi...

Tourism is an important component of protected areas. Nonetheless, it brings both positive and negative impacts. While tourism may potentially threaten nature conservation, it provides substantial economic income to support conservation efforts. Therefore, enhancing visitor awareness through education in the park is important. Today, most parks offer tourism activities with educational values. However, due to shortage of staff, it is not possible to obtain visitors’ feedback pertaining to their educational experience. This paper aims to reveal visitors’ satisfaction on their educational experience specifically the guiding quality in Kinabalu Park, Malaysia. Questionnaire survey was conducted in the park stratifying domestic and foreign visitors. While most visitors were satisfied with their experience and interaction with guides, there was still room for improvement in terms of capacity building among guides from the local communities. There was increasing expectation of foreign vis...

This paper discusses the state of tourism development in Perlis the smallest state in the country located at the northernmost part of Peninsular Malaysia where Malaysia borders Thailand. The focus is on the issues and challenges faced in developing tourism in the state. The collection of both quantitative and qualitative data was carried out in February and November 2010 involving site inventory, interviews, literature survey and desktop search. The findings reveal that despite the state’s tourism potentials poor accessibility, improper and inappropriate development planning not in accordance to the uniqueness of local tourism resources, and poor maintenance have thwarted the potential role of tourism as a tool of development in the state, thus limiting its tourism function to that of a mere transit town and a minor border tourism destination.

Introduction: Coastal areas in Malaysia can have important impacts on the livelihoods and health of local communities. Efforts by Malaysian government to develop and improve the landscape and ecosystem have been planned; however, the progress has been relatively slow because some of the coastal areas are remote and relatively inaccessible. Thus, these coastal communities face various challenges in health, healthcare and quality of life. This paper presents a study protocol to examine the health status, healthcare utilisation, and quality of life among the coastal communities. In addition, the relationship between the community and their coastal environment is examined.
Methodology and analysis: The population of interest is the coastal communities residing within the Tun Mustapha Park in Sabah, Malaysia. The data collection is planned for a duration of 6 months and the findings are expected by December 2020. A random cluster sampling will be conducted at three districts of Sabah. This study will collect 600 adult respondents (300 households are estimated to be collected) at age of 18 and above. The project is a cross sectional study via face-to-face interview with administered questionnaires, anthropometrics measurements and observation of the living condition performed by trained interviewers. Abbreviations: GCRF = Global Challenges Research Fund, NHMS = National Health and Morbidity Survey, TMP = Tun Mustapha Park, WWF = World Wide Fund for nature. status, healthcare utilisation, and quality of life among the coastal communities in Sabah: Protocol of a population-based survey. Medicine 2020;99:37(e22067).

While cemeteries represent a part of any society's cultural heritage, their continued existence in urban areas has raised concerns, mainly due to the scarcity of urban land. Referring specifically to the Chinese cemeteries of Kuala Lumpur, this paper explored the perceptions among the local Chinese residents of the possible multi-dimensional uses of cemeteries for recreational purposes. This issue involves questions of city planning and future land use, urban green purposing and the potential contribution of such land to urban fabric enhancement. Specifically, the authors intended to identify the influence of demographic profile on perceptions in consideration of future planning of cemeteries for recreational purposes. A total of 403 questionnaire samples were collected for analysis. The analysis findings indicated that the possible use of cemeteries for educational purposes was favoured among the respondents in general, with a higher acceptance rate of multiple uses of cemeteries for recreational purposes among younger respondents. Physical design enhancing landscaping, avoiding conflicts overuse, appropriate safety measures and awareness campaigns are all vital if cemeteries are to be promoted for recreational purposes.

Despite wide recognition of the multiple ecosystem services provided by mangroves, they continue to experience decline and degradation especially in the face of urbanization. Given the interplay between multiple resources and stakeholders in the fate of mangroves, mangrove management can be framed as a nexus challenge and nexus thinking used to identify potential solutions. Using the Klang Islands, Malaysia, as a case study site, this paper characterizes the mangrove nexus and stakeholders' visions for the future to identify potential options for future management. Through a series of stakeholder workshops and focus group discussions conducted over two years, results show that local communities can identify benefits from mangroves beyond the provisioning of goods and significant impacts to their lives from mangrove loss. While better protected and managed mangroves remained a central part of participants' visions for the islands, participants foresaw a limited future for fishing around the islands, preferring instead alternative livelihood opportunities such as eco-tourism. The network of influencers of the Klang Islands' mangroves extends far beyond the local communities and many of these actors were part of the visions put forward. Stakeholders with a high interest in the mangroves typically have a low influence over their management and many high influence stakeholders (e.g. private sector actors) were missing from the engagement. Future nexus action should focus on integrating stakeholders and include deliberate and concerted engagement with high influence stakeholders while at the same time ensuring a platform for high interest/low influence groups. Fortifying existing plans to include mangroves more explicitly will also be essential. Lessons learnt from this study are highly relevant for coastal mangrove systems elsewhere in the Southeast Asian region.

Investment drives the economic growth of a country because it is a component of aggregate demand and more importantly it influences the productive capacity of the economy. This article investigates local communities' willingness to invest in tourism industry, focusing specifically on tourism development. A quantitative approach was adopted and a self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 382 respondents from the six districts of Langkawi. Empirical results indicate that knowledge, expectation of benefit, motivation and attitude effects community willingness to invest and savings has the highest effect on investment. In addition, local communities play significant roles in tourism development. Tourism has contributed to the country's economic growth through tourist arrivals with substantial receipts, as such, tourism development requires considerable investment. This study shows that tourism development is related to local community willingness to invest in tourism industry. Moreover, this study provides some suggestions for local authorities in terms of increasing community investment.

Mobility generally refers to the ability or capacity to move. The subject of women's mobility has been well documented and investigated by researchers since the 1970s. Early studies were initially inspired by the issue of gender-based violence encountered by women. At the same time, there is increasing research on women transportation mobility due to the increasing percentage of women working and travelling outside the house. However, there is an absence of studies that adopted a systematic review of studies related to women's mobility. The increase of women working in the 21 st century has led to an increase in the percentage of women travelling, thus engendering issues such as safety, security, mobility and accessibility. This paper attempted to identify studies related to women's mobility in the 21 st century from the year 2001 until the year of 2020 by using a systematic literature review, guided by Preferred Reporting Materials for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses, also known as the PRISMA Statement, to further understand the scenario of urban women travelling in the global context. This paper reviews previous studies conducted in the 21 st century, revealing slight variations of focus among the authors on the urban women travelling issue. Abstrak. Mobilitas umumnya mengacu pada kemampuan atau kapasitas untuk bergerak. Subjek 'Mobilitas Wanita' telah didokumentasikan dan diteliti dengan baik oleh para peneliti sejak tahun 1970-an. Studi terdahulu awalnya terinspirasi dari isu-isu kekerasan berbasis gender yang dihadapi perempuan. Sementara itu, penelitian tentang mobilitas transportasi perempuan semakin meningkat karena meningkatnya persentase perempuan yang bekerja dan pindah ke luar rumah. Namun, belum ada penelitian yang mengadopsi tinjauan sistematis pada artikel terkait studi terkait mobilitas perempuan. Meningkatnya jumlah perempuan yang bekerja di abad ke-21 juga meningkatkan persentase perempuan yang bepergian sehingga menggambarkan banyak masalah antara lain keselamatan, keamanan, mobilitas dan aksesibilitas. Oleh karena itu, tulisan ini mencoba mengidentifikasi kajian-kajian yang berkaitan dengan mobilitas perempuan abad

Values are the core of human when it comes to decision making. In the context of Antarctica, the study of Antarctic values helps to direct the future development in policy formulation related to the continent. The research on value perception in Malaysia has been quite recent and is focusing on young citizens in secondary schools and within the university campus. This paper aims to share the results of research conducted nationwide among the working adults in the state capital cities. Specifically, it aims to identify the influence of Malaysia's scientific involvement on the awareness and values perceived by the urban citizens in Malaysia. Data was collected using a questionnaire survey in all the state capital cities. The analysis results reveal that, the scientific research and publicity of these scientific activities in Antarctica in local media has a significant influence on the awareness and values perceived among the respondents. These include scientific and environmental values. The authors conclude that the recommendations to strengthen the existing awareness programs by focusing on the target audience and to setup media and information centre and coordinating body must be backed by enhancing the existing science communication quality and incorporating the element at all programs.

Protected areas are established for the conservation of unique and pristine environment. Although protected, they are subjected to possible environmental and social impacts due to increasing tourism activities. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Kinabalu Park's environmental interpretation in mitigating these impacts through the assessment of visitors' knowledge. Visitors' knowledge was compared between those who were exposed (post-visit) and not exposed to the interpretive programs (pre-visit). Overall, environmental interpretation in Kinabalu Park contributed to the visitors' knowledge related to general facts as post-visit samples indicated higher level of knowledge. However, there were no differences in their knowledge related to scientific aspect.

As global trends in Marine Protected Area (MPA) management shift towards participatory co-governance, the importance of effective stakeholder engagement in its implementation stages warrant greater emphasis. This case study highlights key lessons learned from the employment of a mixture of focus group discussions (FGDs), interviews and reconnaissance surveys in a preliminary study-site visit to Tun Mustapha Park (TMP), Sabah, Malaysia, where our research team is undertaking a 4-year research and capacity-building project. We found that trust building, understanding the local culture and politics, and recognition of complex stakeholder dynamics were key elements to successful engagement, while identifying key decision-makers for follow-ups were crucial for ongoing engagement. This paper presents insights into the types of information collected by our team, which would be useful among conservation practitioners who will be conducting similar engagement work in the future.

Public parks are often visualized as open spaces which encourage social interaction and are used for recreational purposes. In Malaysia, the planning of parks is based on the hierarchical planning standard requirement in accordance to the size of catchment area. Public parks at a smaller scale are provided in residential areas for the enjoyment of the neighborhoods. In larger cities such as Kuala Lumpur and Georgetown, urban parks do not only serve as the recreational areas for the residents; they are also tourism attractions, such as Perdana Botanical Garden in Kuala Lumpur, which was originally planned as an urban park in Kuala Lumpur. However, due to the dual uses for both recreation and tourism, conflicts may arise due to the different expectations by park users. This paper intends to reveal the user’s perceptions about the role of Perdana Botanical Garden for recreational purpose. The findings revealed that the park users were satisfied with the activities and facilities offered in the park except the parking facilities especially when its location is not within the walking distance for most of the users. Further to that, it is revealed that the role of Perdana Botanical Garden as a tourism attraction has benefited the park users especially in terms of its management, maintenance and the activities created. Nonetheless, improvement in terms of parking facilities to accommodate the users came with private transportation and better accessibility for the tourists via public transportation mode must be adequately considered.

Korea has recently emerged as one of the top tourism destinations in the world, and a catalyst of its rapidly developing tourism industry is Korean drama. Studies on Korean tourism, which focus on sociocultural and gender-related issues, as well as audience behaviors, have been conducted in the Asian region. However, these studies have been geographically limited to monoethnic countries only. As one of the countries contributing to Korea's inbound tourism, Malaysia experienced a significant increase of tourists visiting Korea. Hence, this study aims to identify the motivation segmentation and overall satisfaction level among Malaysian tourists visiting Korea. Specifically, the study aims to identify the influence of Korean drama in their overall experience. A questionnaire-based survey of these tourists was conducted in Seoul City, and cluster analysis was applied to derive motivation segmentation from the collected data. Afterwards, a characteristic comparison was accomplished between drama-and non-drama-watching tourists. Finally, the overall satisfaction of tourists was determined. Results showed three types of motivation segmentation and revealed characteristic differences between the drama-and non-drama-watching tourists. Furthermore, these segmented motivations manifested significant differences in terms of overall satisfaction. In general, Malaysian tourists perceived Korea as a place for family and social bonding, as well as for relaxation and cultural exploration. Interestingly, Korean drama did not influence the overall tourist satisfaction, although it serves as a cultural platform through which tourists gained familiarity with the destination prior to the trip.

One of the earliest civilizations took place in Asia, particularly the East Asian region. As a main result of war, historical travel, such as trading and pilgrimage, influenced the daily life of most people in the region. The Han Dynasty was traced back as the most significant period that triggered travelling activities during the discovery of the Silk Road. Since then, travelling facilities were developed, which consequently led to the increased inter-region movement of people and merchants. This study explores the historical development of travels in Eastern Asia, with a particular focus on the expansion of the Silk Road throughout several dynastic periods of China, as well as its influence on peninsular Korea and Japan. This study concludes that the Silk Road is an important channel for the exchange of tangible and intangible elements between China, Japan, and peninsular Korea as a sinicization process, particularly in the exchange of food, papermaking, and printing technology. An increased understanding of Asia's travel history helps to assess the travelling patterns in the region by revisiting the influence of tourists' socio-demographic factors to include the cultural background with historical elements.

Effective monitoring is necessary to conserve mangroves from further loss in Malaysia. In this context, remote sensing is capable of providing information on mangrove status and changes over a large spatial extent and in a continuous manner. In this study we used Landsat satellite images to analyze the changes over a period of 25 years of mangrove areas in Iskandar Malaysia (IM), the fastest growing national special economic region located in southern Johor, Malaysia. We tested the use of two widely used digital classification techniques to classify mangrove areas. The Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) technique provided significantly higher user, producer and overall accuracies and less "salt and pepper effects" compared to the Support Vector Machine (SVM) technique. The classified satellite images using the MLC technique showed that IM lost 6740 ha of mangrove areas from 1989 to 2014. Nevertheless, a gain of 710 ha of OPEN ACCESS Remote Sens. 2015, 7 14361 mangroves was observed in this region, resulting in a net loss of 6030 ha or 33%. The loss of about 241 ha per year of mangroves was associated with a steady increase in urban land use (1225 ha per year) from 1989 until 2014. Action is necessary to protect the existing mangrove cover from further loss. Gazetting of the remaining mangrove sites as protected areas or forest reserves and introducing tourism activities in mangrove areas can ensure the continued survival of mangroves in IM.