A Study On The Relationships Among Social Capital,Knowledge Transfer And Rural Residents' Tourism Support Attitude

Rural tourism has played an important role in promoting the transformation of rural economic structure,expanding the employment channels of rural residents,and promoting the prosperity and development of local economy.Therefore,countries all over the world have taken the development of rural tourism as an important means to boost social and economic development in rural areas,and China has taken rural tourism as an important grasp to promote the rural revitalization strategy.Sustainable development of rural tourism industry depends on the support of community residents.How to enable community residents to support tourism development as always is an important issue of long-term concern to the rural tourism industry and academia.Previous studies mostly rely on social exchange theory,based on the logic of"cost-benefit" comparison and "positive-negative" impact assessment,to analyze the driving mechanism of community residents'tourism support attitude.However,this perspective regards residents as "economic people" in rational decision-making,assuming that different residents have the same level of cognition and understanding of the benefits and losses brought about by tourism development,and can make rational decisions,which ignores the differences among individual cognitive ability.In the practice of industrial development,the prosperous development of rural tourism in China has begun to show the real dilemma that the individual self-improvement ability of community residents encounters bottlenecks.To a certain extent,it restricts the development of rural tourism and the improvement of residents'tourism support attitude.Therefore,it is necessary to regard community residents as individuals with different cognitive abilities from the perspective of bounded rationality,and explore the theoretical laws and practical paths to enhance residents'tourism support by improving their individual abilities.Knowledge transfer is an important way to enhance community residents'cognitive ability.Recently,some scholars have noticed the positive effect of knowledge transfer on enhancing the support attitude of community residents.The studies found that knowledge transfer helped to improve residents'cognitive ability and tourism management level,and to obtain higher value returns.It also strengthens the community's ability to solve tourism development issues,promotes residents'sense of pride and identity,and forms residents'cohesion to tourism development,thereby enhancing residents' support for tourism.Knowledge transfer among community residents is a typical informal form of knowledge transfer among individuals.Its core lies in trust and social interaction among people.Social capital has become an important driving force to promote knowledge transfer among residents.Although there is a preliminary understanding of the relationship between social capital,knowledge transfer and community residents' tourism support attitudes,relevant studies are scattered and lack of systematic theoretical discussion and empirical support.Based on this,this study combines the theory of social capital and knowledge transfer into the study of community residents' tourism support attitude,constructs a conceptual model of "social capital-knowledge transfer-residents' tourism support attitude ",and carries out empirical tests to provide another mechanism for the formation of community residents' tourism support attitude.In this study,the community residents in four rural tourism agglomerations in Huzhou City,Zhejiang Province,were selected as the research object.The qualitative data were collected through in-depth interviews with community residents,and the quantitative data were collected through questionnaires.Focusing on the purpose of the study,the following three aspects are studied in detail.Firstly,through qualitative design,case studies and in-depth interviews with 35 residents,this paper examines the types and manifestations of knowledge transfer among community residents in rural tourism context,combs out the factors influencing knowledge transfer and the relationship between knowledge transfer and residents' tourism support attitude,and preliminarily explores and constructs the potential impact relationship of "social capital-knowledge transfer-residents' tourism support attitude ".Secondly,the quantitative design is used to test the theoretical relationship among social capital,knowledge transfer and residents'attitude toward tourism support through a large sample of 608 residents' questionnaires.Therefore,a complete theoretical analysis framework of "social capital-knowledge transfer-residents'tourism support attitude" is constructed.Finally,a comparative study was designed to compare the effects of individual differences on the relationships among social capital,knowledge transfer and tourism support attitudes.The main conclusions of this study include the following three points:(1)There is a phenomenon of knowledge transfer among residents in rural tourism areas.Social capital is the key factor affecting the knowledge transfer and tourism support attitude of residents in rural tourism areas.Social capital is mainly reflected in three levels:interpersonal trust,reciprocity cooperation and shared vision.Meanwhile,it is found that knowledge transfer has a positive impact on community residents' tourism support attitude.At the same time,the potential relationship of"social capital-knowledge transfer-residents'tourism support attitude" is preliminarily constructed.(2)This study confirmed the relationships among social capital,knowledge transfer and residents' tourism support attitude.Specifically,empirical research based on large sample shows that social capital has a positive impact on knowledge transfer and tourism support attitude of community residents.At the same time,knowledge transfer has a strong positive impact on community residents' attitude towards tourism support.Therefore,a complete conceptual model of "social capital-knowledge transfer-tourism support attitude" is constructed.(3)Individual characteristics of community residents have significant differences in the relationships among social capital,knowledge transfer and tourism support attitude.Based on the comparative study of individual characteristics,it is found that female residents pay more attention to the influence of social capital on knowledge transfer and tourism support attitude than male residents in terms of gender differences,while there is little difference in the influence of knowledge transfer on tourism support attitude.The elderly residents showed the strongest effect in the relationship between attitudes,while the young residents more recognized the impact of interpersonal trust on knowledge transfer and tourism support attitude,and the middle-aged residents recognized the more impact of reciprocal cooperation and shared vision on tourism support attitude.In terms of the differences in academic qualifications,non-university-educated residents more agree with the positive impact of knowledge transfer on residents'attitude toward tourism support,while university-educated residents more agree with the impact of interpersonal trust and reciprocal cooperation on knowledge transfer and attitude toward tourism support.Based on the rural community situation,this paper regards community residents as the "economic person","social person" and "knowledge person" with the "triple role" of the individual,and constructs the conceptual model of "social capital-knowledge transfer-residents'tourism support attitude",which provides a research ideas for future research in the field of community residents' tourism support attitude.At the same time,it is pointed out that residents'knowledge is an important variable affecting the life cycle of tourist destination,which facilitates the dialogue between the two parallel perspectives of "internal cause theory" and "external cause theory" on the influencing factors of tourist destination life cycle,and enriches the connotation of the life cycle theory of tourist destination.The conclusions of this paper have some enlightenment to the policy formulation and management practice of promoting the sustainable development of rural tourism industry:(1)Local government and industry management departments should guide the community residents to establish "mutual tourism assistance group" to realize the linkage of tourism products and tourism services,avoid the idleness of resident resources,and strengthen Secondly,local governments should unite communities to guide residents to establish "community learning associations" and form a"organizational" and "normalized" model of knowledge transfer activities among community residents,promote the promotion of knowledge,enhance residents'attitude to support tourism development,and push forward.The development of rural tourism is connotative development.(3)Tourism management departments should take the initiative to play the role of "knowledge intermediary",not only to set up "bridges"between different residents and different knowledge sources in rural communities,but also to encourage cross-industry,cross-professional and cross-sectoral knowledge transfer in the whole tourism field in the future,so as to improve the knowledge level of the overall tourism development;(4)Local governments and industry management departments should actively cultivate community social capital,give full play to the positive effect of social capital in promoting knowledge transfer,cultivate rural elites,and stimulate and cohesive the joint efforts of rural tourism development.On the whole,the conclusion of this paper provides an innovative way to promote the healthy and sustainable development of rural tounsm,which solve the obstacles in the development of rural tourism,such as low knowledge stock of residents,low quality of rural tourism development,and the emphasis of tourism management on doing things alone and neglecting cooperation.