Rural Tourism Behavior Research

Rural tourism has a crucial impact on the development of society, economy, environment and culture. In the new century, the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Tourism Bureau demand agriculture department, tourism administration and enterprises combine closely with local situation of tourism development and consider "develop tourism industry to promote the construction of new countryside" as one of the most important objectives of local tourism development. Study and frame workable plans and measures, further strengthen the tourism demonstration and rural tourism; explore new rural tourism products to strive for new progresses in the near future to promote the faster and better development of rural tourism for the purpose of effectively contributing to the construction of new socialist countryside. For consecutive two years in 2007 and 2008, two important documents issued respectively by central government proposed to develop rural tourism and enhance the quality of rural tourism. In 2010, the State Council issued "on the promotion of leisure agriculture and rural tourism development" point out that current Chinese agriculture and rural areas are undergoing major and profound changes:ecological protection of agriculture, leisure tourism and cultural inheritance functions become more and more outstanding. Rural tourism development is an important way of solving the three problems of rural, farmer and agriculture; modernizing agriculture, promoting the construction of new socialist countryside and constructing a harmonious society. How to adapt to the developing tendency of rural tourism and how to increase the quality of rural tourism has become a strategic problem of rural tourism development. Moreover, behavior of rural tourist is also the key issue of rural tourism development.So far, scholars mainly focus on the study of rural tourism program, rural tourism layout, rural tourism and new rural construction etc, while review of related literatures research on rural tourist's behavior is rare. Moreover, the existing literature is not scattered and overall analysis system, lack of guidance to the practice.First of all, on the bases of multi-functional theory in agriculture, tourism experience theory, consumer behavior theory, lifestyle theory, customer value theory, especially according to the consumer behavior theory and taking the city urban tourists as the study objects to construct the frame of rural tourists'behavior analysis system. The thesis consider rural tourists'behavior as to be a related whole processes made of tourists'motivation-cognition-policy-experience-revisit and regret-satisfaction degree and service remedy behavior. In order to study the influence factor of each behavior, then a generally small-scale random sampling made to convey Chongqing rural tourists or potential tourists, getting data of influencing factors of visitors each link of rural tourism behavior. Through the analysis of rural tourism behavior, each link is an organic whole; the research result of the study is of statistical significance; according to the result, appropriate optimizing questionnaire, conducting a large scale of random sampling. Each respondent is asked to answer all questionnaires to obtain the data of representative of Chongqing tourism visitors' behavior. According to the research needs, using logistic regression analysis, factor analysis and principal component analysis and cluster analysis of statistical analysis method, data processing to explore the internal relation among different variables. Study found that:through the analysis of each behavior of rural tourists', rural tourists' behavior is a whole process made of tourists' motivation-cognition-policy-experience-revisit and regret-satisfaction degree and service remedy behavior. The frame is made to study the rural tourists'behavior reasonable and workable. The results are obtained to draw revelation of rural tourism industry and provide theoretical guidance for rural tourism development, also meet the domestic shortage of research in this area. Undoubtedly, it is of great significance.Conclusions of this thesis:1. Analysis of the motivation of rural tourist behavior. Rural tourist motivations are mainly relaxing, informative, physical enjoyable, mental and social communication. Curiosity for rural theme characteristics, the recognition of reception capacity, curiosity for products' characteristics, personnel acceptance level of service, reasonableness of the price, tourists age and family income are positively related; the understanding level of information, consumer experience and the distance between tourist residence and city center are negative correlated. Educational level and willingness has no significant correlation with rural tourism motivation.2. Analysis of rural tourists'cognitive behavior. The most important sources of information are obtained often through television media and former travel experiences. Newspaper, internet and advertisements are major sources to get the information; the plane media, the network exchange, the outdoor advertising are important ways to gain information; the literary works, proclaims and field trip have a little impact on tourists cognition behavior. The degree of concern are greatly influenced by annual holidays; the product information contact degree is only inferior to annual holidays; the level of participation rank the third and tourism products information play comprehensive roles and the degree of characteristics of tourism products is a key point for attracting the rural tourists'attention, while age, education level and the tourism product sources of information, recognition of environmental tourism product are not remarkable factors.3. Analysis of rural tourist decision-making behavior. The individual objective views and the scenery features are two core factors influencing rural tourism decision-making; the age, occupation, income, leisure, educational level are restricting individual objective conditions; prices of products, scenery features, entertainment tourism, health experience are the primary factors in tourist decision-making considerations. Individual psychological factors and environmental factors are the major factors in rural tourism decision-making. In addition, catering and accommodation services, travel services and other service factors also influence the decision-making of rural tourism. Also, family, social groups, travel advice, travel habits affect more or less; but the decision-making behavior of rural tourists influenced less by information.4. Analysis of rural tourist experience behavior. Cost-efficiency ratio is a significant factor influencing the satisfaction of tourists'experience; special tourism project and recreational facilities play a key role; preference also decide the degree of experience satisfaction; the influence of catering and accommodation services, travel services and comprehensive environment on the rural tourism experience behavior are not significant.5. Analysis of rural tourist revisits behavior. The most remarkable factor is the former tour experience; the second important factor is the expectation to the reception service, preference has some impact to some extent, and expectation value for tourists is less affected. By clustering analysis, various important factors of revisiting are defined as rural preference-based, village-type-cold type and the village does-not-matter. A significant effect exist between the number of revisiting factors and the quality of experience; recreational facilities, traffic conditions, special projects of the factors has no longer significant effect on the experience of revisit behavior; awareness features of rural tourists does not reach significant level for revisit experience. The difference between the number of revisiting factors and the quality of experience shows that: Cost-efficiency ratio is a significant factor both for revisit behavior and initial tour experience.6. Analysis the relationship of rural tourists regret, satisfaction and service remedy. There is a significant correlation between perceived performance and satisfaction, however, significant negative correlations exist between regret and satisfaction levels; significantly positive correlation between service remedy and tourist satisfaction; rural tourism service remedy and rural tourists regret is significantly negatively correlated.7. With the clue of urban visitors'of motivation—cognition—decision-experience—revisit-regret, service remedy and satisfaction of rural tourism to analyze the whole process behavior of rural tourists. Study shows that:through the analysis of each behavior of rural tourists', rural tourists'behavior is a whole process made of tourists'motivation-cognition-policy-experience-revisit and regret-satisfaction degree and service remedy behavior. Each behavior is affected by various kinds of factors, but they have some factors in common, such as the theme feature, rural tourism product and rural tourism service. Study also finds that:rural tourist behavior's features is not only having the General behavior of purpose, selectivity, complexity, etc, but also has the rural tourists'behavior's leisure behavior, participation, repetition. The rule is:city for the tourists'a thrust; but the village is a pull. Under certain conditions, rural tourist behavior is the result of the interaction between city push and village pull.Compared with former rural tourism study, this study has four innovations as following:1. Constructing a frame of rural tourists'behavior analysis. With the clue of motivation-awareness-policy-experience-revisiting-regret, service remedy, tourist satisfaction, which explores the whole behavior of rural tourism for the first time and put rural tourists regret, satisfaction and service remedy into one frame to explore the relationship among three factors initially.2. By means of demonstration method to systematically study the rural tourism behavior. Applying logistic regression analysis, factor analysis, principal component analysis, cluster analysis and etc, from the view of rural tourists, the study demonstrates the whole process of awareness-experience-revisiting policy and revisiting experience to obtain a more rational conclusion.3. Through the analyses on rural tourist awareness degree, the study finds that:the annual holiday, product information access degree and the awareness for products are the most important factors influencing awareness degree, the participating degree has comprehensive impact on awareness degree; the specialty degree of tourism products is a focus attracting rural tourists. The age, educational level, product sources and scenery environment awareness have no significant effect.4. The study on revisit behavior finds that, the rural tourists can be defined as:rural preference-based, village-type-cold type and the village does-not-matter three kinds. The revisiting times have significant but the cognitive degree has no significant effect on the quality. Also, the entertainment equipment, transportation condition and special programs have no significant effect on revisiting quality. However, the cost-efficiency has remarkable significant effect on initial and repeat visit.