Studies On Ecological Compensation Mechanism For Rural Tourism In Houhuang Village From The Perspective Of Tourists' Willingness To Pay

Although tourism is called "smokeless industry",it still causes some damage to the ecological environment due to unreasonable development and management.It is an very important institutional means to establish the ecological compensation for tourism for reconciling the contradiction between ecoenvironmental protection and economic development.The negative externality of rural tourism development can be solved through economic incentives for tourism stakeholders,so as to achieve a win-win situation between economic development and environmental protection,which is considered as a hot topic in current research.The local landscape environment and the native culture are critical to attract tourists in the development of rural tourism,The arrival of the exotic tourists plays obviously pressure on the local environment compared with the local residents.The exotic tourists benefit more from tourism activities because they enjoy the recreation experience in tourist attractions.Since the tourists enjoy the recreation experience of tourist attractions and are the bigger beneficiaries of tourism activities,their willingness to pay for the ecological compensation of rural tourism destinations plays a crucial role in the construction of the local ecological compensation mechanism.Houhuang village in Putian city,with beautiful landscape,is surrounded by mountains on three sides.The scenic spot relies on a large number of century-old Chinese dwellings,and has rich projects such as agricultural picking activity,agricultural experience,CS game,team building games etc.The author takes the scenic spots of Houhuang village in Putian city as the object for this study.The questionnaire survey,literature analysis and other methods wer e adopted to obtain research data and available information,and the theoretical framework and estimation method established by predecessors,were used to determine the values of the willingness to pay(WTP)and the willingness to accept(WTA)of tourists for tourism ecological compensation.The current situation and existing problems of rural tourism were first investigated in Houhuang village from the perspectives of compensation subject and compensation standard.Then,the structural characteristics and social influencing factors of implementing the ecological compensation mechanism of rural tourism were further analyzed.Consequently,the author outlined the policy framework and deeply discussed the realization path of ecological compensation for rural tourism in Houhuang village based on the results combining with the idea of agroecological transformation in China.The main results are as follows:(1).In this paper,the allocation of environmental resources and existing problems were systematically analyzed in the current rural tourism development in the research area.The ecological compensation mechanism was used to analyze and solve the contradiction between the benefit maximization and ecological resources in the current rural tourism development of Houhuang village from the tourists' willingness to pay popularly used at home and abroad,which is based on the research results and theories of ecological compensation.(2).Based on the preliminary investigation of Houhuang village scenic spot and the previous research methods,this paper introduces 10 independent variables to reflect the personal characteristics of tourists,including the variables to reflect the individual characteristics,the psychological perception and ecological compensation cognition of tourists.The average WTP and WTA values of tourists' willingness to pay and the impact of tourists on rural tourism resources ware estimated using the CVM and the multiple linear regression methods,values of tourists.The results suggested that the largest variable that affects WTP value is tourists' monthly income and spending amount through correlation analysis and stepwise regression,while the biggest variables that affect the WTA value are tourists' monthly income and educational background,indicating that WTA value is positively proportional to tourists' monthly income and inversely proportional to tourists' educational background.The ratio of WTA/WTP obtained in this study is 2-4 times,locating in a reasonable range.The values of WTA and WTP are not equal in the same situation,indicating that the respondents have different views on the payment of ecological compensation,which is considered to be attributed to the social influence factors on the tourists' willingness to pay.The author further analyzes the results and concludes that the factors affecting tourists' willingness to pay are mainly related to the amount of tourists' monthly income and expenditure and their educational background.The results provide a basis for the research on constructing the ecological compensation mechanism of rural tourism and its management in this region.(3).Finally,the author introduces the concept of three-level market to quantify the rural environmental resources from the perspective of tourists' willingness to pay,tries to effectively capitalize the ecological resources,clarify the property rights in the rural tourism operation,in turn to balance the multiple interest relations between the subject and the object of ecological compensation in the implementation of the ecological compensation mechanism.On this basis,specific policy and management suggestions are put forward for the construction of ecological compensation mechanism and the promotion of sustainable development for rural tourism.The author also proposed the perspective to further study rural tourism in near future.