The Residents’ Perception Toward Religious Festival Tourism

Religious pilgrimage is one of the earliest forms of tourism, its mystique and tradition attracts a large number of religious believers and non-religious tourists. Religious tourism is rich in content and forms, and there are numerous activities and ceremonies, so it has a strong attractiveness. In particular, religious festivals have the value and potential of tourism development because they contents kinds of religious activities, beautiful natural scenery and a long history of human resources. Thailand is a typical Buddhist tourist destination, where has rich tourism resources, a wide range of tourists, diversified tourism forms, mature tourism development. Religious festival attracts many global tourists. Vegetarian festival is popular in some Chinese gathered communities such as Bangkok, Phuket, Trang, Songkhla and the other provinces, which has a long history about300years, now has become one of the important local tourist cards.Tourism activities involve many stakeholders, including the residents as the host, participants, performers, who have an important position. The residents’interests and aspirations can be affected by tourism activities and also affect the progress of tourism activities. Religious festival tourism is related to the interests of residents, so residents’perceptions and attitudes should be considered. This paper takes vegetarian festival of Thailand as an example to study religious festivals and tourism from the perspective of residents’perception. I collect a lot of books, documents, photographs, video, data, interviews and other primary sources through field visits, in-depth observation, issuing questionnaires. Combined with existing research and academic literature, I analyze the data and documents in a qualitative and quantitative way. The conclusions have an important demonstration effect for religious festivals tour and inheritance and promotion of religious ceremonies and activities. At the same time, it can provide a reference for the launch of Chinese religious festivals and better development of religious tourism resources, and improve the quality and service of Chinese religious tourism. Chinese vegetarian festival in Thailand has a very important position. It is the first time to carry out research on this festival, helping the Thai people understand the meaning and form of traditional Chinese culture and promoting the emotional communication between Chinese and Thai.The main contents of this paper has seven parts:1Introduction section introduces the research background, significance, methods, innovations and difficulties;2Literature Review sums up relevant theories and research about religious festivals and residents’perception;3Brief Introduction of religious festivals/ceremonies/tourism situation in Thailand;4Detailed circumstance of Thai vegetarian festival’origin, development, activities, ceremonies and other tourist-oriented fasting, to lay the foundation for the analysis of survey data;5A survey on Thai residents’perception, introduces the design and process of the entire investigation, then use SPSS18.0as statistical tools for data analysis;6Problems of vegetarian festival, Solutions and inspiration, refines problems and countermeasures from the perspective of residents’ perception according to the results of the data analysis in the fifth part;7conclusions and Prospects for the content of this study and future research.