Research On Tourists’ Rurality Perception And Rurality Spatial Production In Rural Tourism Sites

The concept of "countryside" in traditional Chinese culture encompasses not only geographical aspects,such as politics,economy,and culture,but also a spiritual dimension with special emotions.Rural tourism offers a relaxing way for people to escape the city’s hustle and bustle and pursue leisure and entertainment.This has become highly popular in recent years.With the development of rural tourism,"rurality",which represents the essential attributes and core attraction of rural tourism,has attracted widespread attention from academics.However,in the discourse system of rural tourism,rurality has many "other imaginations",and has become a reference standard for governments,foreign investors,and scholars to evaluate the attractiveness of tourism.Tourists,as the main subject of tourism,were missing from the research.Moreover,the inner mechanisms of rurality production by different subjects in rural tourism spaces must be explored.This study aims to address these issues by assuming that rurality is the core attraction of rural tourism,and analyzing the elements and dimensions of tourists’ perceptions of rurality through thematic analysis and semi-structured interviews.It then introduces a spatial production perspective and conducts a case study of Beigang Village in Haikou City.It uses participatory observation,interviews,and textual analysis to investigate the role of multiple subjects in the spatial production of rurality,the interaction mechanism,and inner logic.The main conclusions are as follows:First,this study found that in the process of rural tourism,tourists’ perceptions of rurality can be divided into 24 objective elements representing five subjective dimensions:relaxation,authenticity,novelty,escapism,and modernity.Second,this study refines and constructs the tourist perception of rurality to match the objective elements of rurality to the subjective feelings of tourists.It also reshapes the concept of rurality in the tourism context based on the "people-land" relationship based on a postmodern perspective.Third,taking Beigang Village as an example,this study found that under tourism development,rurality shows a dynamic production process in rural spaces.The government,foreign operators,tourists,social media,and villagers play the roles of the guiding force,driving force,intrinsic condition,catalytic factor,and passive force,respectively.This deeply analyses and reveals the spatial production mechanism of rurality,in which multiple subjects interact.Fourth,using Beigang Village,this study drew on spatial production theory to analyze the spatial production logic of rurality under the interaction of multiple subjects.It argues that spatial production of rurality is not only a process of interaction among multiple subjects but also a process in which power,capital,culture,life,and other elements behind the subjects compete for rural commercial,consumption experience,and living spaces through rural planning and management,writing and imagination,and local practice.The fundamental purpose is to produce rurality that is continuously attractive to tourists.However,the spatial production of rurality,dominated by capital,power,and culture,weakens villagers’ real demand for rurality elements and living spaces.Villagers’ ownership of rurality elements is deprived of the power-capital growth alliance formed by the government and foreign operators.Villagers’ right to use rural spaces is appropriated by the consumer culture formed by tourists and social media.This leads to a series of “social-space” alienation problems such as the symbolisation of the spatial landscape,the entertainmentisation of spatial perception,and the dislocation of spatial subjects.In summary,this study explored tourists’ rurality perception and rurality spatial production in rural tourism sites,expanding the depth and breadth of related theories about rurality and spatial production.Meanwhile,it provides a reference for China to explore the sustainable development path of rural tourism and urism practices of rural revitalisation.