Asean Youth Participation In Asean Heritage Tourism: A Symbolic Interactionism Study

Abstract

The youth’s point of view on heritage tourism is the starting point for promoting heritage protection and urges one another to be responsible and address the environmental issues. Significantly, their participation and involvement can strengthen heritage protection (Devianto et al., 2019) This study understands the view of ASEAN Youth participation in ASEAN Heritage Tourism using qualitative study through Symbolic Interactionism framework. Symbolic Interactionism is a sociological perspective that focuses on how individuals use signs or symbols to create shared meaning between themselves and others. The researcher conducted interviews with 6 ASEAN youths coming from Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia because the main focus is the youth’s experience in their respective ASEAN countries using semi-structured data where results were transcribed and coded for emerging themes. Three research questions guided this study: 1. What does heritage tourism mean to ASEAN youth; 2. What are the ASEAN youth's involvement and participation in heritage tourism; 3. What framework for heritage tourism in ASEAN can be proposed that is inclusive of youth’s involvement? For the youths visiting heritage sites is a means for “traveling", "knowing history" with a form of "appreciating architecture" and "educating oneself". The youths participated as active volunteers, advocates and aware of the impact of the ASEAN movement on society, regional development, and for future generations. This provides a balanced view of the youth’s contribution and participation to ASEAN heritage tourism and contributes to ASEANOLOGY in the use of sociological frameworks and methodology like Symbolic Interactionism.