Tourism And Residents’ Lives:Impact,Perception And Attitudes

At the end of20th century, tourism was widely promoted in poor area of China as a mean of poverty alleviation. However, in terms of economic benefits and enhancement of socio-cultural environment, positive impacts would be induced by tourism, as well as negative ones. Local residents, as beneficiaries of tourism, have to suffer the negative impacts of tourism. Residents are the subjects of tourism. Their behavior has a close relationship with the destination image. Therefore, research of local residents is a significant part of tourism research.Based on the literature review of PPT (Pro-poor Tourism) research, economic impacts of toursim, socio-cultural impacts of tourism, local residents’perception and attitudes towards tourism, this paper focus on empirical research in Baoshan village of Yunnan province. After field work in Baoshan Village, I selected82effective questionnaires to analyze the economic impact and socio-culutural impact on residents and residents’ perception and attitude towards tourism development.This paper is composed of7chapters:Chapter1is introduction, Chapter2is literature review, Chapter3is the overview of Baoshan Village and the preliminary analysis of data, Chapter4is the economic impacts of tourism on local residents’lives, Chapter5is the socio-cultural impacts of tourism on local residents’lives, Chapter6is residents’ perception and attitudes towards tourism.The conclusions of this paper are listed as follow:(1) To some degree, tourism leads to the augment of income of local residents in poverty-stricken area. There are many reasons that may cause the augment of income, such as the distance between home and scenic spot, age, education, property condition, and occupation.(2) The tourism development of Baoshan Village is in early stage. Therefore the socio-cultural impacts of tourism on local residents’lives are not conspicuous.(3) Residents’perception and attitudes towards tourism are different in many aspects, such as gender, occupation and education. In general, residents are positive about tourism, but they are not satisfied with current situation of tourism in Baoshan Village.