Research On Rural Tourism Destination Governance Mechanism:a Grounded Theory Analysis

Due to meet people’s pursuits of backing to nature, rural tourism is booming around the world. Practices shows that rural tourism has played driving role in developing rural economy and in adjusting agricultural structure. Furthermore, this role is significant and irreplaceable. However, in addition to the considerable economic benefits, rural tourism is also facing difficulties and problems in the development and practice, such as problems in society, resources and environment. Thus, as a platform for the development of rural tourism, rural tourism destination governance is particularly important. From the governance point of destination, this study is to explore the governance mechanism which can guide the sound development of rural tourism and avoid the negative impact of rural tourism.The governance of rural tourism destinations is the problem that involving a wide range of complex issues. It will involve the government, villagers and other stakeholders. Besides, it will include tourism development, resource conservation, environmental protection and so on. Previous studies usually learn from the methods of sociology or management, and give proposals according to some problems in rural tourism. In fact, a systemic governance mechanism is much more important for actual operation. Using grounded theory in this study aims to build a new destination governance mechanism by extracting new concept from the fact. This is not rigidly adhere to originals, but a process of innovation.According to the specification of qualitative research framework, this study introduced the research background and previous studies in the first two parts. Before the main qualitative research, the resources attributes and stakeholders of rural tourism have been analyzed in the third chapter. Through the grounded analysis of Mao Jiayu village, the study concluded a new mechanism:Elite-led interactive governance mechanism. Besides, four governance path were proposed coordinately, namely:the institutional elite-led governance, public governance" of administrative organization, collaborative governance of community participation, and market standardization governance. Finally, the study point out the limitations, shortcomings and future studies.