Research On The Influencing Factors And Mechanism Of Community Participation In Tourism Development Of Ancient Towns

Community participation in tourism development plays an important role in sustainable development of tourism destination,and it is also one of the research focuses of domestic and foreign scholars.The conception and content of community tourism perception,influencing factors,residents' perception and attitude toward tourism were the main research subjects recently.But the formative mechanism and comparative study on community participation in tourism development are less involved.This paper chooses Zhouzhuang,Tongli,Shaobo,Huangqiao and Zaohe to conduct a study on community participation in tourism development.First,the current situation of tourism participation is generally analyzed.Then the sense of place,perception,support degree and participating abilities of residents who are in different life cycle stages and own different demographic characteristics are compared through ANONA and T-test.Next this paper builds a structural equation model reflecting influences on community participation using four structural variables based on the sustainable development theory,social exchange theory and behavioural geography.Then choose Zhouzhuang,Tongli,Shaobo and Huangqiao to conduct an empirical study.At last,the formative mechanisms in different life cycle stages are compared.Results of this study are listed as follows:(1)Community participations are different among ancient towns of different life cycle stages,and generally the degree of community participation in ancient town of Jiangsu Province is not high.It can be divided into shallow-stage and deep-stage.With the development of tourism,the degree of community participation is continuously improved and finally would go into the stage of full participation.Through the analysis of influencing factors' mean value,It is also found that residents perceive strongly to tourism positive influence and the sense of place,and support tourism development highly,but perceive less to tourism negative influence,and the ability of participating is generally weak.(2)As internal factors,it is demonstrated that different demographic characteristics would cause significant differences on residents' sense of place,perception of tourism influence,support degree and participating ability.The main influencing factors of perception are gender,age,living time,background and revenue;The main influencing factors of residents' sense of place are gender,age,living time and birthplace;The main influencing factors of support degree are gender,age,living time,education background,revenue and occupation;while education background,revenue and daily expenses would cause significant variation on participating ability.(3)As external factors,life cycle stages of tourism destination would cause significant differences on residents' sense of place,perception of tourism influence,support degree and participating ability.It is indicated residents in consolidation stage would perceive much stronger to negative influence and place dependent,and tend to have higher participating ability.While they would perceive weaker to positive influence and support less to tourism development.(4)The structural equation model of ancient town is reasonable.There are some characters in common on structural equation model of different life cycle stages."Participating ability" and "support degree" have a direct positive impact on tourism "participating behavior",in which the former is a main factor.While "the sense of place" and "perception" have an indirect positive impact on"participating behavior".And the perceptions of social and cultural impact exact a much stronger influence on "support degree" and "participating behavior".There are also differences on structural equation model in different life cycle stages.It is demonstrated that in the development stage,"place identity" exact a much stronger influence on "support degree",and the technology and fund is the main factor among the ability of participation.While in the consolidation stage,the "support degree" is influenced by "place identity" and "place dependent" together.And the access to tourism policy plays an important role in the degree of tourism participation.The structural equation model reflecting influences on community participation is proposed and ancient towns in different life cycles are compared.And this paper innovates in the perspective,scale and method.In the future,diachronic analysis and structural model's revision should be enhanced,to provide more effective scientific data for sustainable development in tourism destination.