Impacts Of Rural Tourism On Livelihoods Of Poor Farmers

In recent years,residents' tourism demand has grown rapidly,which promoted by the development of national economy,and rural tourism has achieved unprecedented prosperity.Aiming at protecting ecological environment and improving farmers' livelihood by fully exploiting the potential of rural resources,positive effects of rural tourism on eradicating poverty and invigorating the countryside have been widely recognized,which is treat as an effective strategies to reverse the marginalization of rural development.However,due to the high consistence of geographical distribution between poor rural areas and vulnerable ecological-regions in China,rural tourism destinations are actually complex social-ecosystems,which are dynamic and unpredictable.Although rural tourism improves farmers' livelihoods,it makes local social-ecosystems exposed to shocks generated by inherent seasonality and cyclical volatility of tourism,which has improved adaptation difficulty and livelihood uncertainty of farmers,not conducive to reducing the social-ecosystem vulnerability.How to evaluate the impact of rural tourism on the livelihood of rural households?What is the mechanism that drives livelihood vulnerability of famers increasing?What are the influential factors of farmers' livelihood capital and livelihood strategies?Based on the above questions,this article takes advantage of the sustainable livelihood framework and related theories,treating rural tourism destinations as a local social-ecosystem,"participating in tourism" as an adaptive livelihood strategy for famers who live in the vulnerability context and driven by the existence rationality,and then examining the adaptation process of farmers from the perspective of integrated system.This article makes use of data,which derived from questionnaire surveying to 5 sample villages that located at Fujian province,to evaluate farmers' livelihood situation by combining with the subjective weight method and the objective weight method,as well as carrying on classification comparison,to analyze the driving factors of livelihood vulnerability,then establishing simultaneous equations model to explore the factors that affecting farmers' livelihood capital and livelihood strategies and their interactive feedback relations.Research shows:(1)Rural tourism has improved the farmers' livelihood capital,but there are obvious differences between different sample villages,as well as different livelihood strategies;(2)Totally speaking,the livelihood vulnerability of rural households is at a medium-high level,while the livelihood vulnerability of traditional livelihood households is lower than that of tourism-participating households;(3)The unfavorable disturbance to social system is the biggest obstacle for farmers to reduce the vulnerability of livelihood,and the instability of social capital and cognitive capital is the key;(4)There exists significant positive feedback relationship between farmers' livelihood capital and livelihood strategy,and the proxy variables(except "tourist qualities")of vulnerability context and transforming structures&processes have a significant contribution to the improvement of livelihood capital and the decision of livelihood strategies.In order to enhance farmers' participation enthusiasm in tourism,improve livelihood capital and reduce livelihood vulnerability,this article puts forward policy recommendations from two aspects——vulnerability context and transforming structures&processes,such as resources sustainability,stakeholder cooperation,institution supplying and mechanism designing.Socio-ecosystem vulnerability theory has rich connotation,subsequent researches should focus on farmer's sustainable livelihood and promote the great program constantly,which is "alleviating poverty and revitalizing the countryside by tourism".