A Longitudinal Study On Residents’ Perception Toward Ecological Relocation In Wulingyuan World Heritage Area

As one of the main stakeholders in the tourism destination,residents’ perception toward ecological relocation has a direct impact on their attitude and support toward ecological relocation project.Therefore,as the core contents of ecological relocation project performance evaluation,residents’ perception is imperative to be studied.Based on the data of field survey in 2010 and 2016,this paper analyses the dynamic changes of residents’ perception toward ecological relocation on the basis of social exchange theory in the context of the third resettlement of Wulingyuan Scenic Area.To begin with,the independent sample T-test and one-way ANOVA were used to compare the difference of residents’ perception toward ecological relocation and analyse how demographic characteristics affect residents’ perception.Then descriptive statistics method was used to make contrast among three different types of resettlement in 2010 and 2016.Finally,we used the multiple regression equation to analyse the overall perceptions of the residents in 2010 and 2016.The main conclusions are as following:Overall,residents expressed supportive and positive attitudes toward this strategy.To be specific,residents highly appraise the environmental and economic impacts of relocation while their negative perceptions of impacts are commonly concentrated on ecological relocation policy;Resettlers tend to pay more attention to items of their ital interests such as economic income,employment and education opportunity,infrastructure construction as well as public service.Different modes of relocation also influence resettlers’ perception of impacts of relocation.Compared with their perceptions toward ecological relocation in 2010,respondents from the Gaoyun community generally had negative attitude toward the relocation,whereas those in the Yuanjiajie community tended to favour the relocation.Economic and policy impacts became the dominate factor of residents’ overall perception of displacement.Considering those conclusions,a number of practical suggestions and implications for future project planners are drawn as follows:as for the injustice springing from unlawful operations and corruption,strict monitoring,creative institutional arrangements,and stringent implementation of laws when corruption is detected should be used to eliminate illegal conduct;Educational capital should be improved so numerous fund can be invested on those residents;Small-scale businesses and collective or social entrepreneurship opportunities and employment training should be encouraged among resettlers;The rights and obligations of urban residents should be explicit;’Differential measures should be made among three different modes of relocation under specific conditions.