**4. Conclusion**

The concept of community participation is regarded as an important tool to assist in ecotourism sustainable development and enhancing local socio-economies of numerous rural communities. While this initiative may be argued as an ideal toward achieving successful development objectives, there is always missing link in its implementation which results in a failure to achieve the expected ecotourism development overall objectives. Many literatures have reported that local communities have not been actively participating in ecotourism development process due to various factors such as socio-economic, lacking of skills, rural setting, misunderstanding of roles, etc. In response, a model that sought to facilitate active participation of local communities in ecotourism development initiatives had been developed. Although it may not be a panacea to all challenges faced by those involved and those who should be involved in ecotourism development initiatives, the model is aimed at ensuring that all stakeholders, based on their unique capacity, actively participate at all levels of ecotourism development project.

*Approaches toward Community Participation Enhancement in Ecotourism DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100295*
