A Stady On The Socio-Cultural Impact Of Tourism To World Cultural Heritage Sites

Beyond the economic revitalization and regional prosperity atdestinations, the rapid development of tourism industries resulted in varioussocial contradictions. Both positive benefits and negative effects of tourismdevelopment were noticed increasingly by scholars and practitioners. Socialand cultural aspects of tourism impacts on destination communities became afocus of research. Most of researchers originally believed that tourismdevelopment changed the natural heritage of social culture at destinations, andnamed tourism as ‘New Colonialism’ in the21stcentury. Furtherinvestigations with methodological updates pointed out that the traditionalbeliefs might not fully describe the impacts of tourism development. In termsof the impacts on local social culture, what are they and how? The presentstudy aims to explore how the world cultural heritage regions could ‘fosterstrengths and circumvent weaknesses’.On the theoretical perspectives of sociology and tourism (e.g.,stakeholder theory, social exchange theory, and tourism development stagetheory), the current study applied a questionnaire survey to measure such26aspects of residents living in Yongding Hakka Earth Buildings as the style andquality of production and life, dialect, traditional folk culture, interpersonalrelationships, the polarization between the rich and the poor, and moraldimensions, and the social culture influences of tourism were thendemonstrated. The factor analysis shown five latent variables:‘daily lifeimpacts’,‘traditional folk culture’,‘mental consciousness’,‘interpersonalrelationship and tourism income distribution’, and ‘social values’. Thesurveyed residents had positive perceptions on the first four variables butnegative on the last one. The results indicate that in the present stage, thetourism development of Yongding Hakka Earth Buildings’ area mainlycontains positive impacts on local residents’ perceptions.The thesis contains six following sections. The background, implications,methods, and technology roadmap are briefly discussed at the beginning. Based on the definitions of relative concepts about tourism social cultureimpacts on destinations, the international&domestic literatures have beenreviewed to show the research progress.The theories including stakeholder theory, social exchange theory, thetheory of community participation, tourism development stage theory, andcultivation theory are then integrated to form the theoretical base of thepresent study.As a reference to follow-up studies, the social and cultural changes in thetourism development of Yongding Hakka Earth Buildings are discussed indetails to introduce the development process of tourism, local social andculture categorizations&characters, and the social&cultural changes fromdeveloping tourism.A quantitative study by factor analysis and cluster analysis on the surveyfocused on the specific impacts of tourism development on social culture ofthe world cultural heritage regions, and constructed the network map oftourism influences. The study compared the tourism social cultural influencesamong three villages: Hongkeng, Gaobei, and Chuxi, and further comparedthose with the situations in three destinations in Anhui province: Xidi,Hongchun, and Nanping. Tourism development has stronger impacts on localsocial culture at Hongkeng village than Gaobei and Chuxi village, which wasfurther explained by tourism development stage theory.From the empirical findings, the paper concludes the study withimplications to relevant theories, research and practices, and makessuggestions to local tourism development. The suggestions include: providingopportunities for community residents to participate the tourism planning,increasing tourism involvement, applying ‘community involvement’ strategies,and constructing the map of the community involved tourism development ofYongding Hakka Earth Buildings; selecting appropriate business content andforms about Hakka culture, differentiating explicit and implicit culture, anddeveloping culture; reinforcing professional training and education on theemployees in tourism relevant industries; increasing awareness of localresidents and visitors on protecting Hakka culture resources; establishing research and inspection institutes of tourism impacts; building the protectingareas of Hakka Earth Buildings; and properly designing the tourist routes ofHakka Earth Buildings Heritage Culture by integrating resources.The contributions, limitations, and future research directions are alsodiscussed.