Geography Investigation Done by: Gordon Damian Tan Kai En (6)In collaboration with : Addison Gan (5), Kyran Chong (16), Sean Rodrigues (28)Class: LE403Contents PageStage 1: Pre-field InvestigationDescription and purpose of area of investigation Page 2Inquiry Question Page 2Hypothesis Page 2Research Page 2Methodology Page 3Sample of Questionnaire Page 4Stage 2: Field InvestigationPhotographs of team at site Page 5Maps of Marina Bay Area Page 8Tabulated Data collected from field investigation Page 9Stage 3: Post-field Investigation Graphs of tabulated Data – Dining & Business Page 10 Graphs of tabulated Data – Travel & Scenery Page 11 Graphs of tabulated Data – Cleanliness & Decorations Page 12 2) Analysis of Data Page 13 3) Acceptance and Rejection of Hypothesis Page 14 Challenges Page 14 Suggestions Page 15 Stage 1: Pre-field Investigation 1) Description and purpose of area of investigation:My group and I did not want to do physical geography as we felt it was very similar to our secondary 3 Geography Investigation that we did last year. Instead, we wanted to explore a new area and decided to do human geography instead. We then decided to do sphere of influence as just as Singapore grows to become a more popular and attractive tourist destination, we wanted to find out more about how tourist attractions affect the surrounding area around it.
Different attractions would attract different types of people and this would results in the area being affected as different types of buildings or facilities would be built in order to accommodate these different types of people. 2) Inquiry Question: How do different attractions in Singapore affect the development in the surrounding area?3) Hypothesis: The attractions and landmarks located in Singapore have a positive influence on the area around it greatly toward their sphere of influence.4)Research: So what exactly is sphere of influence? In the dictionary, the definition of sphere of influence is “a field or area in which an individual or organization has power to affect events and developments”. This means shows how an object or place is able to positively or negatively affect its surrounding area such as its physical and social environment. While researching on the subject of sphere of influence, I came across a website on www.bbc.
co.uk . This website was also along the topic of sphere of influence and it was more specifically on the topic of settlement hierarchies. In a nutshell, this website explains that the increase in size of the settlement will result in higher population and more services around the settlement. It also states that ” Larger settlements and conurbations have a much larger sphere of influence than smaller ones. This means they attract people from a wider area because of the facilities they offer.
“. These statements are related to my geographical investigation as a tourist attraction is similar to a large settlement and based on this reference the same results should apply. This implies that the Marina Bay Area should attract people from a huge area due to its vast sphere of influence. Furthermore, the Marina Bay Area in Singapore is one of the largest areas with many tourists attractions close by such as the Merlion, Marina Bay Sands and Esplanade and many more.
This should further increase the attraction of the Marina Bay Area toward tourist and locals alike and should consequently cause population and services to shoot up. From this website, I learnt that the attractiveness of an area will immensely influence the development of the surrounding area in terms of the community and business. I also discovered that the the size of the area greatly and directly affects the sphere of influence that area emits. After coming across this website, I feel that this research into the topic of sphere of influence has helped me understand the topic sphere of influence much better than I did at the start of this geographical investigation. I also feel that this website is extremely useful as it is informative and concise.
I also felt intrigued and curious about the settlement hierarchies as I did not know there was such a system before conducting this research. 5) Methodology: Before beginning our geographical investigation, we decided to determine the level of development of the area with the use of 6 different categories: Dining, business, convenience of travel, scenery, cleanliness and decorations. We surveyed the public (40 people, inclusive of locals and tourists) in order to find out how they felt about the various conditions and environments in the places they were at. Some examples are their thoughts on cleanliness, accessibility, what kind of shops they go to. Our results were determined through personal observations and the use of bipolar surveys. One of the sites we chose to conduct our investigation and data collection was the area around the Merlion as the Merlion is one of the most iconic tourist attractions in Singapore.
As such it would be a good choice to have it as one of the sites to conduct our investigation and survey due to the many tourists we could survey, and not just the usual local residents in Singapore. We made sure to only interview 1 person in a group of tourist and get the opinions of people of different race, nationality and age to reduce biased opinions and more reliable results. We spent 4 hours at the various sites at approximately 3pm to 7pm as that was the time where more tourists would visit the area as well as that was around the time locals would have just finished their lunch. We also went on a saturday as on saturday locals do not need to work and more locals will be able to come to the Marina Bay Area. Therefore, this was the optimum time for us to do our field investigation. We chose to go on a day where it was sunny and not cloudy or raining as lesser people will be around the outdoor Marina Bay Area if it was going to rain. We decided on using a bipolar survey as it would give us a better understanding and accuracy on how the public felt regarding the various places. It is also a more convenient and an easier form of data collection, for both us and the public, as it is less time consuming unlike open ended surveys and interviews, hence we chose the bipolar survey as our main source of data collection as it is the most efficient.
For our surveys, we also used a systematic method of surveying every 5th person we encountered. This is so that we would ensure consistency in results and also allows us to gain our results more efficiently. We would also cover a 1km radius around each respective attraction and recorded down the number of bus stops, mrts and taxi stands which contributed to the factor “convenience of travel”. Our survey questions were aimed at allowing the participant to choose how they felt about the the different categories of the Marina Bay Area such as Dining, Business and so on. The results of this survey questions will allow us to compile and compare the data and eventually make a conclusion on whether the tourists attractions in Marina Bay had a positive or negative influence on its surrounding area.5) Sample of our Questionnaire: Lower quality-2-1012Higher qualityDiningQuality of food and interior/exterior- Disgusting, expensive Dirty/rundownQuality of food and interior/exterior- Delicious, Affordable, CleanBusiness Deserted Thriving Convenience of travelLittle to no mrt stations, Bus stops and small roads that congest trafficMany mrt stations, Bus stops and many large roads to ease traffic SceneryView blocked by buildingsNice view barely blocked by buildingsCleanliness Lots of rubbish Little to no rubbish DecorationsRun-down/Ugly decorations/BuildingsNice decorations/Buildings Stage 2: Field InvestigationPhotographs of team at site: Photo1: Team at Marina Bay Area Photo 2: Addison about to interview a tourist Photo 3: Sean and Gordon conducting a Photo 4: Team inside Marina Bay Sands survey with tourists Photo 5: The boardwalk above Marina Bay Photo 6: The Merlion Area SandsPhoto 7: The Inside of Marina Bay Sands Photo 8: Kyran, Sean and Gordon walking where we conducted our surveysPhoto 9: The helix bridge Photo 10: Team photo at The Merlion2) Maps of the Marina Bay Area: Map 1: Map of Marina Bay Area Map 2: Satellite Image of the Marina Bay Area 3) Tabulated Data collected from field investigation: -2-1012Negative points Positive points Dining 0171616132Business 0041917036Convenience of travel 0251518233Scenery 0031423037Cleanliness 0061222034Decorations 0451516431Stage 3: Post-Field InvestigationGraphs of tabulated data: Graph 1: Graph of data collected for DiningGraph 2: Graph of data collected for BusinessGraph 3: Graph of data collected for Convenience of Travel Graph 4: Graph of data collected for SceneryGraph 5: Graph of data collected for Cleanliness Graph 6: Graph of data collected for DecorationsAnalysis of data: From the data, it i clear that majority of participants answered with 0,1 and 2 and much fewer participants with -2 and -1. In Dining, 39 participants answered with 0,1 and 2 points compared to 1 participant answering with -1 point and 0 people answering with -2 points.
7 participants answered with 0 points and 16 participants answered with 1 point and 2 points respectively. There is a total of 32 positive points and 1 negative point. This shows that majority of participants feel that the dining at the Marina Bay Area is exceptional. This also shows that the dining shops in the Marina Bay Area serve good food at reasonable prices and the interior of the shops are intriguing and interesting. This allows the dining areas to attract tourist and locals alike and is positively influenced by the tourist attractions located along Marina Bay.
Secondly in the Business area, all 40 participants answered with 0 points and above with no one answering at any negative points. 4 participants answered with 0 points, 19 participants answered with 1 point and 17 participants answered with 2 points. There is a total of 36 positive points and no negative points at all.
This illustrates that all of the participants of our survey felt that in the area of business the Marina Bay area was thriving. Additionally, this shows that due to the tourist attractions, many businesses are able to survive and some even thrive as many tourists and even locals are attracted to the shops around the area of Marina Bay. This evidently shows a forward-looking result due to the positive influence of the Marine Bay Area.Thirdly in the convenience of travel section, all participants but 2 answered with 0 points and above, with the 2 participants answering with -1 point. 5 participants answered with 0 points, 15 participants answered with 1 point and 18 participants answered with 2 points. There is a total of 33 positive points and 2 negative points.
This implies that tourist attractions are easy to reach and near to MRTs, bus stops and taxi stands. With these forms of transport all located around the Marina Bay Area and area large in quantity, participants are able to easily commute to and fro from the Marina Bay Area. All these means of travel were implemented due to the positive influence of the tourist attractions around the Marina Bay Area. Next in the Scenery sector, every participant answered with 0 points and above without any negative points with majority answering at 2 points.
3 participants answered with 0 points, 14 participants answered with 1 point and 23 participants answered with 2 points. There is a total of 37 positive points and no negative points. This indicates that the Marina Bay Area is pleasing to the eye and is attractive to both tourists and locals alike. The beauty of the tourist attractions as well as the surrounding area bring in people like bees are attracted to honey. This scenery is positively influenced by the tourists attractions such as the Merlion and Marina Bay Sands which are actually part of the scenery itself. In the Cleanliness sector, alike the Scenery sector all participants answered with 0 points and above with most of them answering at 2 points. 6 participants answered with 0 points, 12 participants answered with 1 point and 22 participants answered with 2 points.
There is a total of 34 positive points and no negative points. This establishes that the Marina Bay Area is kept in clean with minimal litter and rubbish around. The Marina Bay Area being kept at such a unblemished state attracts more people to its area as people will feel that the area is well-maintained and would like to spend time there.
This is influenced by the tourists attractions as the tourist attractions are to be kept in pristine condition and thus the surrounding area is also kept clean. Last but not least in the decorations area, 36 participants answered with 0 points and above while 4 participants answered with -1 points with the majority answering at 2 points. 5 participants answered with 0 points, 15 participants answered with 1 point and 16 participants answered with 2 points. There is a total of 31 positive points and 4 negative points. This presents that most of the participants felt that the decoration of the surrounding area were well done and beautiful.
Therefore, the decorations are positively influenced by the tourist attractions as the attractions are also part of the decoration of the Marina Bay Area. After analyzing the data, it is obvious that in all six sectors almost all the participants answered with 0 points and above. There were even three sectors which were business, scenery and cleanliness where there were zero negative points which indicates that Marina Bay Area did outstandingly in those areas. However, surprisingly there were the most amount of negative points which was 4 in the sector of decorations. I feel this is astonishing as tourist attractions are also decorations and if there are the most amount of negative points in the decorations that corresponds partly to the tourist attractions being beautiful but not the best that people think that they can be.
Acceptance and Rejection of hypothesis: The hypothesis is accepted. This is because from the data collected, it is evident that most of the tourists and locals we surveyed felt that in all six sectors the area around Marina Bay scored very high with majority of the points being 1 and 2 points. These results show that the tourist attractions in the Marina Bay Area do influence their surroundings positively and allow both tourist and locals to enjoy themselves and have a memorable and wonderful experience there. Challenges: During our field investigation at Marina Bay Sands, we faced a number of problems. FIrstly, when we were surveying people, some of them from what we could tell did the surveys relatively fast as if they did not put much thought into their answers.
This may have affected our results as they may not have answered with their honest opinion and cause the results to be slightly unreliable. Secondly, as we did the systematic method of collecting our data, we were unable to obtain an equal number of tourists and locals. This affects our results as we do not have a accurate balance of both tourists and local answers and locals maybe a bit more bias as they want to put their country under good light and put all high points. Thus, the results maybe affected by the inequality of tourists and local participants.Thirdly, as this was done during the holiday period, the areas where we were conducting our interviews were very crowded. Thus, it was very difficult to stick to the systematic method of obtaining results and we did not stick exactly to it.
This may have affected our consistency of results. Suggestions on how to minimize inaccuracies and improve on the data collection methods or the whole field investigations: After reflecting on our Geography investigation, there are a few suggestions on how we can improve and be more effective in our investigation. Firstly, we should have asked every participant that we surveyed whether they were a tourist or local. This way, we would be able to count how many tourist and locals we have surveys and obtain an equal amount of answers at the end of the investigation. This would greatly help increase the accuracy of our results and help us have a more effective analysis of data.
Secondly, we should not have used to systematic method to collect data. Although it is good at consistently collecting results, it was very hard to stick to and in the end we were barely able to follow it well. We should have used another method such as the random method instead. Thirdly, we should be more cooperative with each other. During the pre-field investigation, we should have stated what days we were free so that we could find a day where we could do our field investigation faster and more efficiently.
When we were doing our field investigation, we should have assigned roles to everyone such as photographer and interviewers so that we would work together better. This would allow us to work more efficiently and may allow us to obtain better results.Bibliography : Bbc.co.uk. (2018).
BBC – GCSE Bitesize: Settlement hierarchies. online Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/urban_environments/settlement_characteristics_rev4.shtml Accessed 22 Jan.
2018.Google maps
