Building an Integrated Framework for Sustainable Cultural Tourism Development in Nigeria: Evidence from Policy, Infrastructure, and Community Livelihoods

Abstract

Nigeria boasts one of the most rich cultural heritage landscapes in Africa, including more than 250 ethnic groups, globally known festivals, archaeological sites, museums, sacred groves, and traditional institutions. In spite of all the assets mentioned above, the cultural tourism industry of the country is underdeveloped and makes little contribution to economic diversification in comparison with other top tourism destinations in Africa and Asia. Previous researches have focused on separate aspects such as tourism policy, infrastructure, heritage conservation, community participation, and destination competitiveness without paying much attention to interactions between them in the context of industrial development. This paper presents a developed and validated model of sustainable cultural tourism development, which involves the analysis of impacts of tourism policy, infrastructure, heritage management, community participation, and digital tourism on sustainable cultural tourism development and destination competitiveness in Nigeria. The research employs a sequential explanatory mixed-method design; quantitative data have been gathered via survey among 1,200 tourists in four geo-cultural tourism clusters in Nigeria, while qualitative data have been collected via 40 interviews with key informants including policymakers, heritage managers, tourism operators, investors, and community representatives. SEM analysis was used in testing the hypotheses alongside thematic analysis and cultural assets mapping using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Results indicate that tourism infrastructure, policy coherence, heritage management, digital tourism, and community participation increase sustainable cultural tourism development, leading to increased destination competitiveness and livelihoods improvement. GIS analysis also shows significant spatial differences in infrastructure and access to cultural tourism destinations. This research makes contributions to tourism literature by incorporating theories such as Sustainable Livelihoods Approach, Stakeholder Theory, Institutional Theory, Tourism Area Life Cycle and Resource-Based View Theory within one analysis. An evidence-based policy approach is also presented in the paper that could be adopted by policymakers and other stakeholders when turning cultural heritage into a sustainable tool of economic diversification and cultural preservation. Implications of this research could be useful for tourism governance in developing countries aiming at sustainable development via cultural tourism.