Rural Narratives on Travel and Safety, Implications for Community Development in Rural Communities in Southeast Nigeria

The study was aimed at understanding the safety narratives on travel among rural adults and, the implications of this for community development in rural Nigeria. Key Informant Interview and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) approaches were adopted. Cluster, purposive and convenience sampling techniques aided the sampling of fifty rural adults, ten tourism development experts and ten community development experts from selected communities in Southeast Nigeria. Moreover, Yaro Yamene Fomular aided in downsizing the huge study population to a sample size of 354 respondents who were shared questionnaires. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while analysis of variance was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result shows that rural adults perceive huge safety threats in travels and this indirectly affects community development in rural Nigeria. Also, that travel motivates rural development through necessary exposures, new ideologies, critical criticisms, and trending community development approaches. This study has implications for exploring travel as an alternative route to community development in rural areas.