The Research Of Relationship Between Residents' Perceptions On Tourism Impacts And Their Participation Behaviors In Ecotourism Communities

The traditional mass tourism pays excessive attention to the economic profit and, to some degree, follows the same old disastrous track of promoting the industrialization "at the cost of environment", resulting in the environmental deterioration at the scenic sites and the loss of tourism benefits. Ecotourism, as a sustainable and responsible tourism form, emphasizes the conservation of the environment, community participation and high quality traveling experience, has attracted people's attention in the field of tourism and environmental conservation in the world since put forward, and become the main subject of the 20th century international tourism studies. The development of ecotourism has led to extensive impacts on the scenic sites and the communities, the host of which, residents, are the main receiver of the impacts. Paying attention to the residents' perceptions on tourism impacts and encouraging residents to participate in ecotourism are the effective means to increase the positive and reduce the negative impacts. This paper, with residents in the ecotourism communities as the subject, probes into the interaction between residents' perceptions on tourism impacts and their participation behaviors, and contributes to the harmonious and all-win development of tourism, communities and residents.The popularity of ecotourism activities has produced myriads of definitions which result in the confusion among academics and industry stakeholders alike. This research aims at solving this confusion with a set of criteria by which ecotourism can be better defined. 40 contemporary definitions of ecotourism are used as samples, all of which were published after 1990. Six criteria are identified as most frequently appeared in the literature, including being nature-based, preservation/conservation, contribution to local community, environmental education, ethics/responsibility and sustainability. To sum up and in concert with the principle ethics of sustainable tourism, ecotourism is defined in this study as a responsible form of nature-based tourism, whereby environmental and cultural education, impact management, and community involvement (control, benefits, and scale) are paramount to the experience. Ecotourism actively contributes to the conservation and preservation of the environment on which it depends.What is more, given the inconsistent study scale and measure criteria about, no study on and unreliability and invalidity of the research methodology of residents' perceptions on tourism impacts, this paper, through interviews of domestic and foreign experts and case studies of the typical ecotourism sites in China, establishes the assessment scale of Chinese residents' perceptions on ecotourism impacts and community participation behaviors by means of statistical analyses of factors and corresponding project designs, and theexamination of reliability and validity. According to this assessment scale, there are 3 dimensions and 11 items of residents' positive and negative perceptions on ecotourism impacts respectively, and 4 dimensions and 13 items of residents' ecotourism participation behaviors. It is demonstrated that this assessment scale can be used to measure Chinese residents' perceptions on ecotourism impacts and participation behaviors.At last, this paper develops a relationship model of residents' perceptions on ecotourism impacts, their attitudes and behaviors. Through the analysis of structure formula, 5 main conclusions are drawn:(1) Residents' positive perceptions on ecotourism has evident positive impact on their attitudes at ecotourism development and their participation behaviors.(2) Residents' perceptions of the negative impact have no evident influence on their attitudes at ecotourism development, but have evident positive influence on their ecotourism participation behaviors.(3) Residents' attitudes towards the development of ecotourism have evident positive impact on ecotourism communities' participation activities.(4) Residents' economic perceptions on the positive and negative impacts of ecotourism directly influence their attitudes at and behaviors of ecotourism. The economic influence of ecotourism is the main factor which can enhance residents' support and participation in ecotourism. Residents' perceptions on environmental influence have no impacts on their attitudes at ecotourism development and their participation behaviors. In the process of ecotourism development, more and the first attention is paid to its economic influence, followed by the social and cultural influences and the last due is the environment impacts.(5) There are obvious individual differences among the influential perceptions of residents on ecotourism, the attitudes at ecotourism development and residents' participation, due to the differences of residents' sex, age, educational degree, income level, living period, distance from the scenic spots and the extent of involvement in tourism activities.