Rural Tourism Destination For Residents Of The Community Satisfaction Research

With the increasing discrepancy between rural and urban regions in China, the relocation of wealth and the loss of labor forces are now big challenges to rural communities. Rural tourism is considered to be a solution, which can improve the community satisfaction and prevent the decline of traditional rural communities.This paper focused on the farmers whose communities are as the destination of rural tourism. The purpose of the study is to determine how rural tourism affects the community satisfaction by changing both individual and community's situation. A questionnaire survey was designed and distributed to villagers in five villages around Hangzhou city with flourishing tourism industry. Statistical methods include exploratory factor analysis, ANOVA, Structural Equation Model and so on.It was found that: Rural tourism can give farmers benifit in both material and spiritual aspects. Rural tourism inevitably changes the rural community not only economically but also socially, culturally and ecologically.It was found that: Personal incomes from tourism activities vary greatly among individuals. The positive impacts of rural tourism are significant on community's economy and ecological environment but insignificant on social and cultural aspects. The negative impacts are generally very limited but do exist on some aspects of community's economy and ecological environment. Among factors that determine the overall community satisfaction, villagers are more satisfied with the ecological environment and public service but less satisfied with the administration and the personal relationship in the community.It was found that: Rural tourism affects the community satisfaction in the following path: personal income from tourism activitiesâ†'perception of the impact of tourism activitiesâ†'community satisfaction. People with higher incomes tend to have better recognition on the positive impacts of tourism on economy, culture and environment, but less perception of the negative impacts on community economy and culture. However, villagers hold similar opinions on the negative environmental impacts regardless their personal incomes. The positive impacts of rural tourism on economy and environment could significantly improve the residents' satisfaction with the community while its negative impacts on economy and culture could lower their satisfaction. Other impacts have no significant consequence. The perception of tourism impact plays an intermediary role between personal income from tourism and community satisfaction, and personal income from tourism can effect community satisfaction directly.