Research On The Island Community Participation In Tourism Based On The Empowerment Theory

Since China has promulgated《Island protection law of the People sRepublic of China》in2010, Our country s attention to island developmentand protection is more and more higher. Now, the problem of islandprotection and development has become the important development issuesto the coastal provinces. Due to the nature of island, especially inhabited island, island tourism make local residents involved in to gainbenefit. Therefore, community participation in tourism island to islandresidents has great significance. In view of this, it s very importanthow island tourism take the sustainable development road. At present,there are a series of problems in community-based tourism, thecontradictions which are among in island communities，government anddevelopers hinder the island tourism sustainable development.Tourism empowerment theory turn the community-based tourism to thepower relation discuss among stakeholders. It holds that the communitieslie on the brink of the power relation and the key of community-basedtourism healthy development is community empowerment. Under the guidanceof community empowerment theory, regarded island community as theresearch object, this paper concludes the island community-based tourismsituation and power relations, sets up evaluation index system of islandcommunity tourism empowerment, proposes suggestions which advance islandcommunity tourism empowerment. Its purpose is to realize the power balancein the island community, government and developers, promote islandcommunity-based tourism healthy development, achieve sustainabledevelopment both island tourism and island community. The main contentsof this paper are as follows: First, analyze island community-based tourism situation: islandcommunity participation conditions are different and present mainlyeconomic participation. Analyze community s power in island tourismunder community empowerment theory. The island community residents ineconomy, political, psychological and social power is lost. Otherwise,there is lack of institutional guarantee. Island community, governmentand developers are in unbalanced power relations. Secondly combing thecommunity empowerment theory, community empowerment literature and thepower of island community, use expert consultation method and AHP to setup evaluation index system of island community tourism empowerment withfour dimensions, use FCE method to evaluate island community tourismempowerment conditions which divided into better, well, general, poor,worse. Then, select Qingdao island communities as a case, on the basisof field data collection, analyze lingshan island community and tianhengisland community tourism empowerment. The results show, lingshan islandcommunity tourism empowerment is general， tianheng island communitytourism empowerment is general. Through horizontal and verticalcomparative analysis between lingshan island and tianheng island ineconomic empowerment、 political empowerment、 social empowerment、psychological empowerment, it finds that psychological empowerment iswell and political empowerment is bad in general for this two islandcommunities; lingshan island community empowerment is better thantianheng island community empowerment. Finally, according to thecharacteristics of island tourism, put forward suggestions on islandcommunity tourism empowerment: diversify economic distribution;education empowerment; full participation to promote social empowerment;information empowerment; institution empowerment.