Abstract:
It is becoming more common for governments to acknowledge adventure tourism as a
strategy for responsible and sustainable economic growth that is beneficial to all levels
of the society. This is due to the fact that adventure tourism has been proven to be
beneficial to the environment, as well as to the people and host economies of the
destination. The aim of the study was to assess the contribution of adventure recreation
development to rural livelihoods in Nyeri County. The study adopted an exploratory
research design. The target population was 248050 household heads. The sample size
was 384 respondents comprising of rural household heads within Nyeri County. Cluster
sampling was used for the study to divide the sample size into smaller groups (the Eight
sub counties in Nyeri County) while simple random sampling was used to distribute the
sample size proportionally among the eight Sub Counties. Primary data was collected
through questionnaires where closed-ended questions were used. On the
questionnaires, all responses were collected using a 5-point Likert scale where 1
b
indicated strong disagreement and 5 indicated strong agreement with each statement.
Additionally, structured interviews were administered to the respondents who had
difficulties reading and writing. In this case, the questionnaire was used as interview
guide. The findings revealed that adventure recreation infrastructural development
significantly (10.2%) contributed to rural livelihood such as increment in employment
opportunities and enabling transportation of farm produce to the nearby markets. In
order to improve the rural livelihoods in Nyeri County, there is need for the national
and the county governments to develop more adventure recreation infrastructure and
upgrade the existing ones.
