Construction And Empirical Study Of The Evaluation Index System For Rural Health Tourism Access

Rapid developments in the rural tourism industry have resulted in continuous promotion and comprehensive implementation of the government’s rural revitalization strategy.Consequently,current academic research is focusing on strategies for the development of innovative rural tourism products and formats,integration of agriculture and tourism,and rapid growth of the health industry.Over the past three years,the demands of tourists have substantially changed owing to improvements in living standards and the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health.The concept of health tourism,which emphasizes a healthy environment and lifestyle,is becoming increasingly popular in the market.As part of the two major strategies,namely Healthy China and Rural Revitalization,a series of policies have been introduced in the country to promote the rural health tourism market,which has been showing a rapid growth trend.Rural health tourism is a novel industry that aims for comprehensive integration of the “three industries,” the longest industrial chain,and the strongest sustainability.These aspects play an important role in promoting the development of rural farmers and creating the motivation for attaining wealth.Notably,the rural health tourism industry is neither technology-intensive nor monopolistic;moreover,it has a relatively low entry threshold,which could easily lead to blind development,duplicate construction,vicious competition,damage to the ecological environment,and a waste of resources.Therefore,it is crucial to determine the entry criteria for rural health tourism,establish an evaluation index system that conforms with the regional reality,and standardize the healthy development of rural tourism.Several technical and practical accomplishments have been attained related to the standardization of health tourism projects and the establishment of rural health tourism demonstration villages in China.Based on such accomplishments,this study constructed an evaluation index system for promoting rural health tourism based on four dimensions,namely health environment,resource endowment,favorable transportation conditions,and facility guarantee.These dimensions were refined into 25 specific evaluation indicators for collecting basic data on weights through expert consultation and applying the analytic hierarchy process to determine the weights of various indicators for evaluating admission to rural health tourism.Furthermore,a rural health tourism access evaluation model was established for classifying the access to rural health tourism into five levels,namely extremely unsuitable,unsuitable,relatively suitable,suitable,and very suitable.As the last two levels were set as standards for entry into the rural health tourism market,a quantitative measurement tool was provided for determining whether rural areas were suitable for achieving rural revitalization through the development of rural health tourism.This study used the constructed rural health tourism access evaluation index system to guide the evaluation of rural health tourism access in Dingluan Town.The rural health tourism conditions in the area were evaluated by employing field research and expert scoring methods.The following conclusions were derived from this research:(1)In developing rural health tourism,the weight of the rural health environment in the four dimensions accounted for 47.95%.Rural health tourism is a special holiday tourism activity based on a healthy environment and,therefore,has extremely strict requirements for climate conditions,air quality,forest coverage,water environment,and other aspects of the destination.Resource endowment ranked second,with a weight of 26.81%.Specific indicators included interesting agricultural activities,the beauty of the agricultural landscape,tourism resources in the vicinity,and historical and cultural values.These indicators have relatively high weights in the indicator system.Rural tourism resources are an important factor for attracting rural health tourists.(2)The overall characteristics of rural health tourism in Dingluan Town are balanced health conditions,resource endowments,favorable transportation conditions,and facility guarantees,all of which belong to the upper middle level and allow for low-level development of rural health tourism sequences.The development of rural health tourism in Dingluan Town is still in the exploratory stage,i.e.,at a certain distance from the mature stage.The limitations associated with geographical resources and environment,as well as the gradual disappearance of rural localities,contribute to making Dingluan Town suitable for developing rural leisure and health tourism,with the surrounding cities being the main source market.This study provides feasible ideas and methods for evaluating access to rural health tourism.The results have important theoretical and practical significance for improving the rural health tourism environment and promoting rural revitalization.