A Research On The Mechanism Of Public Participation In Destination Governance

The democratic political development, legislation promoting, strategy propulsion, duty transformation of government and the practices of tourism administrative departments at all levels have established the foundation of public participation in destination governance in China. But its theory and practice is insufficient at present. Therefore this paper introduces the public management theory, governance theory, public participation theory to research the mechanism of public participation in destination governance and its practice framework.Based on the reviews of the existing research achievements on destination governance and public participation in destination public affairs, this paper analyzes the concepts and connotations of destination public affairs, destination governance, and public participation in destination governance. At the same time, this paper puts forward that the mechanism of public participation in destination governance is composed of three dimensions:dynamic mechanism, implementation mechanism and guarantee mechanism.Specifically, its dynamic mechanism is composed of pushing mechanism and pulling mechanism. Firstly, the pushing mechanism includes five factors, such as the status rising of tourism in the public’s life, the improvement of the public’s consciousness of participation, the requirement of the expression and integration of public demands. Secondly, the pulling mechanism includes eight factors, such as the complexity of destination surroundings, the diversity of destination public affairs, the requirement of destination’s balanced development, the duty transformation of governments and their needs for public participation. Moreover,4E (Economy, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Equity) objects and the sustainable development of destination are bidirectional dynamics.Its implementation mechanism is an integration mechanism, which is composed of the subject, object, level, way, process and result of public participation. And its execution depends on the effective execution of three aspects:public participation choice, process and result. Firstly, public participation subjects are composed of residents, community organizations, tourism enterprises, tourism workers, tourists, non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, research institutions, media and specialists. Public participation objects are composed of eighteen classes, such as tourism legislation and law enforcement, tourism policy formulation and implementation, destination branding. Public participation levels include low, moderate and high degree, which are composed of informing, consultation, public opinion support, resource support, collaboration (negotiation/cooperation), power delegating, and public autonomy. Public participation ways cover more than forty different ways, such as government information publicity, key contact, nominal group, civic meeting and coproduction. Based on the professional degree, the importance of the public’s support, time limit degree and the corresponding seven questions, this paper constructs the model for the effective execution of public participation choice. Furthermore, the process of public participation in destination governance is a continuous process, whose key effective execution factors are full process, fairness, legal and legitimate procedure, government’s effective response. The results of public participation in destination governance are4E-centered and include the public’s output and input, government’s input and output. Its effective execution depends on the fully achievement of the above factors.Its guarantee mechanism involves the construction of participative political culture and service-oriented government, the enhancement of the public’s participation ability, institutional supply and the establishment of an effective incentive mechanism. Furthermore, the political culture is the foundation of its guarantee mechanism and the other aspects are guarantees to stimulate and keep the public’s enthusiasm for participating in destination public affairs.Based on the above researches, this paper chooses five Chinese excellent tour cities (Qingdao, Jining, Jimo, Qufu, Zoucheng) as examples to carry out self-administered questionnaire survey in personnel of the administrative department of tourism and the public (residents). The survey data is analyzed by SPSS19.0. Survey results show that, destination public affairs mainly need the high level and moderate level public participation; the public pay more attention to the following factors:full process, fairness and legitimate procedure; governmental personnel more approve the participation results of government’s input and4E, the public more approve the participation results of satisfaction with participation activities and the factors belonging to their participation rights; the public’s consciousnesses of rights have been formed, but their public spirits, their willingness to accept education for public participation and organized participation are insufficient; governmental personnel have accepted public participation in tourism public affairs and are trying to promote government information publicity, but the institution supply is inadequate; the public regard the influence on participation result, government providing convenient conditions, economic return/compensation and governmental reward as important incentives.This paper’s innovation mainly lies in four points:Firstly, introducing the theories of public management to define and interpret the concepts and connotations of public affairs, governance, the mechanism of public participation in the context of tourist destination for the first time; Secondly, changing the one-way thought to two-way and introducing the push and pull theory to newly construct an integrative model for the dynamic mechanism of public participation in destination governance; Thirdly, constructing the implementation mechanism of public participation in destination governance which is composed of six dimensions for the first time; Fourthly, expanding Thomas’s model to three dimensions and amending its operation steps to construct a model for the operation of the implementation mechanism which applies to both public decision affairs and public action affairs.