Assessing Tourism Potential in Bihar, India: A District-Level Evaluation Using Composite Indicators Influencing Tourism Growth

Abstract

Tourism has emerged as a prominent employment generation sector in recent years. Therefore, it’s pertinent to explore the potential of concerned areas for enhancing their competitive edge and also to attract better tourism plans for the region. In this study, an attempt has also been made to explore the tourism potential of selected districts of Bihar, considering direct and indirect factors influencing tourism attraction. This study employed the Weighted Sum Method (WSM) and the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) to compute the composite weight of 12 indicators under direct and indirect factors for each district, and based on the final weight, the districts were ranked accordingly. Further, the districts were clustered into 4 groups: very high potential, high potential, low potential, and very low potential. The result suggested that the districts classified into very high and high tourism potential were in parlance with core tourism districts of Bihar with the exception of Muzaffarpur and Rohtas, while the districts with low and very low tourism potential were located in peripheral areas. The study further paves the way for better tourism planning of the district, with an emphasis on collaborative and integrated development plans

Keywords: Tourism Potential, Weighted Sum Method (WSM), Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), Composite Indicators, Bihar

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