Study On The Residents’ Perceptions Of Eco-tourism Impacts In Lijiang Basin

Residents of the tourism are one of the important stakeholders in thedevelopment of tourism. Their perceptions and attitudes have a critical significance ofthe sustainable development of tourism. This study, based on residents’ perceptions,used the Liker-scale to investigate the community’s perception of the impacts ofecotourism in Li Jiang River Basin.In general, residents’ awareness level of ecotourism is not high. According to this,this thesis used one-way ANOVA and independent t test to analyze the residents fromfour angles, namely are gender, age, occupation and their relationships betweenvocational and ecotourism. The results got from the analysis mentioned above are:first, ecotourism cognitive differences are consistent with the awareness of ecotourism.Second, there are significant variance of the awareness of ecotourism among differentgenders, ages, occupations and ecotourism relationships of residents.Residents’ positive perception of the ecotourism impact is stronger than thenegative perception. The majority of residents are in favor of the positive impacts ofthe development of ecotourism, especially the positive economic influence, such asthe promotion of local economy development. While a considerable part of thepopulation were aware of the negative impacts of ecotourism, particularly thenegative environmental impacts, such as increased environmental pollution.Factor analysis were used and four factors were gotten which were named as“economic impact”,“environmental impact”,“social impact” and “cultural impact”.Then, further analysis of the residents’ cognition characteristics of economic impact,environmental impact, social impact and cultural impact were put as well. On theeconomic impact part, residents’ positive perception was stronger than the negativeperception. Most of the residents were highly in favor of the economic benefits ofecotourism, but there were some residents believed that ecotourism not only wasunable to increase the personal income of local residents, but also caused inflation andincrease of living fees. On the environmental imparts part, the residents’ negativeperception of the environment affect was stronger than the positive perception. Themajority of residents believed that ecotourism exploitation caused a certain degree ofdamage of the local natural environment, and the decline of the quality of the localenvironment. On the social impacts part, residents’ society awareness was not stronggenerally. The majority of residents believed that the development of ecotourism hadlittle impact on the local community. For the cultural impact, residents’ positivecultural perception was stronger than the negative perception. The majority ofresidents believed that the development of ecotourism had benefits to the promotionand cultural qualities of the residents and to improve the exchange between localcommunity and the outside world. But some residents believed that traditional culturewill be impacted to some degree.Using WARD method of Hierarchical Cluster Analysis to analyze the26indicators that measure the residents’ perceptions, it divided the residents who had adifferent perception of features into five categories groups: enthusiasts, realist,rational supporters, contradictive haters and haters.The majority of residents supported vigorously developing ecotourism; whilesome residents who were aware of the problems of the development of ecotourism,supporting the proper development of ecotourism. Only a handful of residents held onecotourism "does not matter" and "not to develop" attitude. From the perspective ofthe demographic characteristics and the residents’ cognitive analysis of the attitude ofthe development of ecotourism, even the gender, age, occupation and otherdemographic characteristics of residents and the general awareness level ofecotourism are different, they vigorously supported the development of ecotourism.