Tourism development seeks robust local communities’ participation epitomizing a marker for its sustainability. Hence, the central aim of this article was to analyze derivers of local community involvement in tourism development of Awash Melka Kunture prehistoric Site of Ethiopia. Quantitative research and descriptive research design; purposive and proportionate stratified sampling technique was used to select the samples of 212 households. Data were collected from three kebele and one Town in Kersa Malima District. A binary logit model was used to identify the drivers that affect household’s engagement in tourism development. Our findings indicate that the involvement of local community in tourism is associated positively with level of awareness, social status of household, education level of household and gender of household. On the contrary, Age of household, size of land owned by household, number of livestock and length of years lived in the area correlated negatively with involvement of local community.
Keywords: Tourism Development, awash melka kunture, local community involvement