Evaluation And Influencing Factors Of Tourists’ Sense Of Place In Rural Tourism Destinations

The "countryside" is an eternal sentiment in the souls of the children of Chinese descendant.Under the background of policies such as the "strategy for rural revitalization" and "common prosperity",rural tourism has become a new form of tourism development with its unique resource endowment and clear role.Since Relph proposed,the sense of place has provided a unique perspective on the affective dimension of tourists’ perception in tourism geography.As a special tourist destination,rural area attracts tourists’ homesickness and reveals its connotation and influencing factors from the perspective of place sense.However,the current research on the sense of place in rural tourism places still has problems such as the lack of tourists’ sense of belonging,and there is an urgent need to study the emotional dimension and influencing factors of tourists’ sense of place.This paper chooses Zhugebagua village in Zhejiang province as the research area and takes tourists as the research object.Through combing and summarizing the domestic and international literature on the concept of sense of place and tourists’ sense of place,as well as relying on place theory,ecological perception theory and tourism experience theory,the paper uses SPSS 25.0 and AMOS 24.0 to conduct descriptive statistical analysis,reliability analysis,factor analysis and structural equation modeling analysis on tourists’ questionnaire data.On the basis of this analysis,we explore the factors influencing the sense of place,with a view to providing suggestions for the development of rural tourism from the perspective of tourists’ sense of place.Research results and recommendations:(1)Score characteristics of tourists’ sense of place in Zhugebagua village.Tourists’ perception of place in Zhugebagua village has a high score,but their place dependence and place identity scores for the place are low.More precisely,visitors’ perceptions of place are stronger for the natural landscape dimension and weaker for the human landscape and tourism function dimensions.Visitors’ perception of family culture and folklore experiences in the place is a low score for the human landscape,and visitors’ perception of tourism services and food and drink in the place is a low score for the tourism function dimension.Visitors’ score of local dependence on the place is relatively high and the score of local identity is relatively low,this low score should be improved by further shaping the uniqueness of the village.(2)There are differences in the sense of place for different visitor group characteristics.This paper adopts t-test to test the differences between the mean values of each dimension of tourists’ group characteristics and tourists’ sense of place,mainly focusing on the differences between tourists’ age,occupation and information channels on the sense of place.The test found that young tourists perceive the human landscape dimension to be weaker and older tourists perceive the tourism function dimension to be weaker.Moreover,there are significant differences between young and old tourists in terms of sense of place,and young tourists have lower scores of place dependence;there are significant differences in farmers’ perception of place in terms of natural scenery,human landscape and tourism functions compared to other occupations,and there are significant differences in the degree of place identity between workers and businessmen,and businessmen and freelancers,and businessmen have lower scores of place identity.There is a significant difference between the two kinds of tourism information acquisition channels introduced by relatives and friends and the other two kinds of tourism information acquisition channels.Moreover,tourists introduced by relatives and friends have a slightly higher perception of Zhugebagua Village in this dimension than other channels.(3)Factors influencing tourists’ sense of place in rural tourism places were obtained through analysis.The structural equation modeling method has been used to prove that tourists’ sense of place of the natural scenery,humanistic landscape and tourism environment of rural tourism places have a positive supporting effect on tourists’ place dependence and place identity,and tourists’ place dependence also has a positive influence on their place identity.As for the coefficient of influence,the coefficient of influence of natural scenery and human landscape on sense of place is relatively high,while the other coefficients are relatively flat,where the role of tourism function is relatively less strong.(4)Ways to improve the sense of place of visitors to Zhugebagua village.This paper makes suggestions from three aspects according to the measurement results and influencing factors of tourists’ sense of place.The first is to improve the construction of the natural landscape of tourist sites,which should take advantage of the local natural environment to develop health care tourism,themed lodges and medicinal planting.The second is to improve the construction of humanistic landscapes to strengthen the local perception of young tourists.Tourist places can make the publicity channels more diverse,carry out cultural and creative performances,and set up folklore experience programs.The third is to improve the construction of the tourism environment.Tourist places can improve the interpretation system,increase infrastructure and develop cultural and creative products.