Eco-tourism Development And Its Assessment In Lin'an

Eco-tourism developed rapidly since 1990s that resulted in the special focus on eco-tourism research. Certain theories have been identified from many researches, but programming and management of the eco-tourism still needed to be emphasized so as to fulfill the object of sustainable development. Therefore, this research focuses on 4 aspects as follows: 1) Analyzing current status and potential prospects of eco-tourism development of Lin'an 2) GIS application in identifying the potential Eco-tourism units for Lin'an; 3) A case study on local communities involvement in eco-tourism development in Baisha and Shangping villages; 4) Design for CBET development in Shangping village. Data were collected and proceeded by conducting the methods of PRA, APPA(Appreciative Participatory Planning and Action) and GIS technique. Questionnaire, semi-structure interview and group meeting were adopted to collect information from tourists, tour operators, tour guides, villages and expert. It's revealed that (1) The major success factors of eco-tourism development in Lin'an are well-protected natural environment, integrated development of Non-timber Forest Products and other ecological industries as well as powerful local political support. (2) Lack of a long-term and integrated development strategy and insufficient involvement of local communities are two major containing elements of Lin'an eco-tourism development. It causes extremely-rapid exploitation of scenery spots, homogenous eco-tourism sites and service items, harmful competition, land-used conflicts, short of eco-tourism market monitoring system, insufficient compensation for forest resources, deficiency of environmental education to public, interest conflict between stakeholders and so on.(3) It's proved to be a successful decision to develop eco-tourism in Lin'an after analyzing the spatial pattern of landscape. Then, naturalness was determined as the character of ecotourism attraction in Lin'an. An definition of ecotourism that meet Lin'an and its 6 attributes and criteria were determined respectively. At theend, with the overlay of the 6 attributes of coverage, 2 types of potential eco-tourism unit coverage were identified. (4) At present, gradually-advance and span-progress are 2 major eco-tourism development models in Lin'an. These two development models have the common issue on insufficient community involvement that as follows: participation scale; Program involved; Management ability; Awareness and degree of participation; Relation between stakeholders; Information sharing & training opportunities; Participatory type.(5) It's urgent to change the participatory form and improve the involved level of the local communities in eco-tourism development in Lin'an. The local communities member should create a circumstance to get more involvement by extending involve scale, improving the involve patter, enhancing the personal ability and participatory consciousness. At the same time, local tourism authorities and tour operators should establish forum to let local communities involve. (6) It's recommend to develop CBET for those communities that own resources as similar as Shangping village's by considering the function of CBET on increasing the participatory level. In order to ensure the success of CBET, at the begging phase, the local government and NGO should give some support to speed the community to self-sufficient. APPA application is another important factor.