Internal Assessment • Fieldwork location
Ko Samet
A place-based introduction to tourism development, environmental quality and fieldwork planning on a small protected island in Rayong Province.
Four days / three nights • two full island data-collection days
Locate the fieldwork site
Understand the island’s connections, contrasts and constraints before deciding what to measure.
Ko Samet lies in the Gulf of Thailand and is connected to the mainland through Ban Phe. Much of the island is within Khao Laem Ya–Mu Ko Samet National Park. Proximity to Bangkok, ferry access, beach quality, resort concentration and limited island infrastructure create strong contrasts for fieldwork.
Map enquiry
Locate ferry entry points, settlements, beaches, roads and protected areas. Identify a likely tourism core and quieter peripheral locations, then propose a transect that captures contrasting development intensities.
Read the island through competing representations
Promotional guides, visitor testimony, research and environmental reporting present different versions of the same place.
For each source, record author, date, purpose and audience. Extract claims about access, beaches, facilities, environmental quality and visitor experience. Look for corroboration and contradiction, then convert disagreements into fieldwork questions that primary evidence can test.
Development, protection and carrying capacity
Visitor growth creates livelihoods and services while increasing pressure on a small island’s land, water, waste systems and beaches.
Employment and enterprise
Accommodation, food, ferries, recreation and services connect local livelihoods to visitor spending.
Changing place and access
Tourism reshapes land use, prices, mobility and relations between residents, workers, visitors and outside investors.
Island limits
Waste, freshwater, sewage, congestion, beach condition and marine health reveal carrying-capacity pressure.
Impact matrix
For each proposed impact, identify who gains, who bears the cost, the scale involved and the primary evidence needed. Distinguish visible observation from a claim requiring measurement or secondary data.
Turn place knowledge into methods
Every method must produce evidence that helps answer the fieldwork question.
The NIST investigation uses contrasting beaches, first-time and returning tourist questionnaires, local stakeholder surveys, visitor and resort counts, environmental-quality evidence and infrastructure observations. Visits to the reservoir and waste-management plant help students test carrying-capacity claims.
Fieldwork planner
- Predict how tourism impact should vary between four beaches.
- Classify each beach independently using Butler’s Model before fieldwork.
- Select complementary quantitative and qualitative methods.
- Justify the sites, sample, timing and ethical procedures.
- Identify one likely limitation and design a practical mitigation.