Revenue diversification strategies and financial sustainability in the public sector: case study of Uganda wildlife authority

Abstract

This study examined revenue diversification strategies and financial sustainability in the public sector, with specific reference to the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA). The study was guided by three objectives: to examine the extent to which tourism-based revenue diversification strategies influenced financial sustainability; to determine the extent to which non-tourism commercial revenue sources contributed to financial sustainability; and to assess the extent to which partnership-based and alternative financing mechanisms enhanced the financial sustainability of the Uganda Wildlife Authority. The study adopted a cross-sectional case-study research design, employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches within a pragmatist paradigm, and was anchored in Modern Portfolio Theory and Resource Dependence Theory. From a target population of 200 staff members and an accessible population of 180 drawn from the Finance, Tourism and Business Development, Conservation Services, Planning and Research, and Human Resource and Administration departments, a sample of 162 respondents was determined using Yamane's (1967) formula at a 2.5 per cent margin of error. Data were collected using structured questionnaires and key-informant interview guides, and analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and simple and multiple regression, with qualitative data analysed thematically. Of the 162 questionnaires distributed, 138 were completed and found valid, giving a response rate of 85.2 per cent, while 9 of the 12 planned key-informant interviews were conducted. The findings revealed that tourism-based revenue diversification had a moderate, positive and statistically significant relationship with financial sustainability (r = .512, p < .001), explaining 26.2 per cent of the variation in sustainability. Non-tourism commercial revenue was also found to have a positive and significant influence (r = .436, p < .001), accounting for 19.0 per cent of the variation, indicating that research permits, filming and wildlife-use licences, and ecosystemservice payments behaved counter-cyclically and stabilised income when tourism faltered. Partnership-based and alternative financing exhibited the strongest relationship of the three (r = .583, p < .001), explaining 34.0 per cent of the variation and emerging as the most influential predictor. All three relationships were significant at the 0.01 level, leading to rejection of the respective null hypotheses. Multiple regression established that the three strategies jointly explained 49.7 per cent of the variation in financial sustainability (R = .705; adjusted R² = .486; F (3, 134) = 44.13, p < .001), with each retaining a significant independent contribution: partnerships (β = .381), tourism-based diversification (β = .286) and non-tourism commercial revenue (β = .174). The study concluded that tourism-based diversification, non-tourism commercial revenue, and partnership-based and alternative financing each significantly and positively influenced the financial sustainability of the Uganda Wildlife Authority, with the strength of their effects shaped by enabling conditions such as governance capacity, negotiation and monitoring expertise, market volatility, and the ecological limits within which commercial expansion had to remain. It was further established that the combined explanatory power of the three strategies exceeded that of the strongest strategy taken alone, confirming that financial sustainability at the Authority was best understood not as the product of any single revenue stream but as the outcome of a deliberately balanced portfolio.