MAY, 2018 | Published Online

New social science index methodology developed at Prince of Songkla University, Phuket, Thailand

Martin and Ritchie’s research is a product of inter-faculty communication and collaboration at Prince of Songkla University, Phuket Campus. Their paper develops a social science weighting schema for tourism planning and sustainable development, eco-tourism, and conservation studies, using surf tourism as a representative worked example.

The research employs assessment scores based on field studies of nine Phuket beaches, which were weighted against data taken from surveys of international experts from diverse backgrounds. The findings indicate that analysis of weighted data helps identify key metrics, and that weighted data provides insights not apparent from working on unweighted data.

Their work is intended to help future researchers to identify  and address social, economic, environmental, and governance issues faced on the Andaman Coast and in other eco-sensitive locations around the world. Their approach to analyzing interview data can be applied to research on the management of national parks, coastal surfing resources, fisheries and dive sites.