Research On The Residents' Perceptions To Tourism Impacts In The Rural Area

Rural tourism with the motivation of close to nature has been spreading rapidly around the world, along with the booming economy and urbanization. It is proved that the rural tourism is of great significant to the rural community construction, which has been given proper attention by all governments. In China, rural tourism has become the new growth for Chinese tourism and shown the dynamic vitality and huge developmental potentials in driving rural areas to quickly shake off poverty and make a fortune, promoting the building of a new socialist countryside, and constructing a harmonious socialist society. Rural tourism indeed, as a comprehensive social phenomenon, has dual impacts that may be positive or negative, such as rural economic growth, the environmental pollution and damage, cultural degenerations and social structure alterations and so on. However, no matter the positive impacts or the negative ones, they all will manifest outstandingly in the rural destination community and the host of which, residents will detect these impacts foremost. Rural residents' perception of the impact will then affect their attitude to the travelers and to the development of local tourism, which will further affect the development and construction of the rural community or scenic area and the local government and tourism developers' decision and attitudes to the tourism development. Therefore, this paper, with residents in the rural tourist attraction as the subject, using the methods of quantitive research and qualitative research, probes into the residents' perceptions on tourism economic, social-cultural and environmental impacts.Based on theories of the perception of tourism impacts, this thesis firstly makes a summary on the related research progress both at home and abroad, defines the implication of the rural tourism, tourism impacts and residents' perception, and then systematically analyzes the theory explanation to residents' perception and portrays the perception mechanism, further puts forward the theoretic hypothesis for the following empirical research.Secondly, taking Sanxia Chexi Folk-Custom Tourist Attraction as the demonstration case, this thesis respectively discusses Chexi residents' perception on three aspects that is tourism economic, environmental and social-cultural impact by analyzing the questionnaire survey from Chexi residents through the SPSS 13.0 factor analysis. Meanwhile, makes analysis on the differences of residents' perception from the demographic characteristics and the relation to the tourism, then sums up the perception features of Chexi residents, employing the independent-samples T Test and One-way ANOVA.The research shows: impacts of the tourism development to the Chexi rural area mainly manifest in three aspects- the economic impact, the environmental impact and the social-cultural impact; Chexi residents perceive stronger on positive impact of tourism, and weaker on negative impact, Chexi residents'perception on positive economic impact of tourism is more obvious than ones on positive environmental and social-cultural impact, the majority of Chexi residents take supporting views for the rural tourism, and the perceptions of different characteristics' residents have some distinctness.Finally, aiming at the actual condition of the tourism development in Chexi , the thesis points out the weaknesses of the development of Chexi rural tourism, and puts forward the measures of developing rural tourism to control the tourism impact and guarantee the sustainable development of Chexi tourism.