A Study On Tourism Willingness And Its Influencing Factors Of Characteristic Towns In Hubei Province

In recent years,the country has vigorously promoted the development of "culture and tourism",focusing on building an important national cultural tourism destination,creating a new situation in the development of China’s cultural tourism industry.During the Spring Festival in 2023,Hubei Province received 33,452,000 tourists,an increase of 28.86%compared to 2022,and achieved a total tourism revenue of 17,733.1 million yuan,an increase of 45% compared to 2022.As an emerging form of tourism,the characteristic town can bring new development opportunities for tourism in Hubei Province.Tourists traveling to the characteristic towns in Hubei Province will not only help to make full use of the unique industrial resources of the characteristic towns,but also relieve the pressure of urban tourism,and will also help to coordinate urban and rural development,promote the implementation of rural revitalization strategy,and drive the economic development of the characteristic towns.Therefore,this paper researches the tourism willingness and its influencing factors of the characteristic towns in Hubei Province,in order to understand the demand and actual situation of the characteristic town tourism of Wuhan residents and better promote the healthy development of the characteristic town tourism industry in Hubei Province.By sorting out the progress of domestic and foreign research on tourism willingness,tourism willingness influencing factors and characteristic town tourism,defining tourism willingness and the concept of characteristic town,based on push-pull theory and tourism motivation theory,this paper divides the influencing factors into push and pull factors,from six aspects: characteristic industry and environment characteristics,perceived value,destination supporting facilities and services,leisure and relaxation,demand promotion and tourism preferential policies The hypotheses related to the influence on the willingness to travel to the characteristic towns in Hubei Province are proposed.Based on the hypothesis,a questionnaire survey and field research were conducted with the help of SPSS26.0 software to statistically analyze the influencing factors and to test the reliability of the sample,and Pearson correlation coefficient was selected to correlate the questionnaire,and multivariate ordered logistic regression was adopted to explore the relationship between the independent and dependent variables.Finally,based on the analysis of the empirical results,the hindering factors of the current willingness to travel to the characteristic town in Hubei Province are found,and the strategies to improve the willingness to travel to the characteristic town in Hubei Province are proposed in order to promote the development of the characteristic town tourism in Hubei Province.The conclusions of this paper are as follows:First,the overall situation of Wuhan residents’ willingness to travel to the characteristic towns in Hubei Province is: insufficient awareness of characteristic town tourism and not strong willingness to travel in general;most people choose to travel in spring in the choice of time for characteristic town tourism;most people tend to stay for 1-5 days in a single proposed stay in a characteristic town.Wuhan residents of different ages’ willingness to travel to characteristic towns shows a polarization trend;most young and middle-aged people choose to travel in spring,while the elderly mostly travel in winter and summer;all age groups tend to have a single proposed stay of 1-5 days.Wuhan residents with different average monthly incomes showed the following characteristics town tourism willingness: characteristics town tourism willingness strengthened with the increase of average monthly income;respondents with 2001-5000 RMB were more willing to travel than those with 5001-10001 RMB.Secondly,the influencing factors of tourism willingness of Hubei characteristic towns were divided into pull factors and push factors,and the influencing factors of town characteristics,spatial distance,living and entertainment services,relaxation,tourism and leisure,and policy recommendation were obtained through empirical tests;and it was found that town characteristics,living and entertainment services,relaxation,demand push,and policy recommendation all positively influenced tourism willingness of Hubei characteristic towns;however,spatial distance does not have a significant effect on the willingness to travel in Hubei’s characteristic towns.Third,combining the results of the questionnaire survey and the analysis of the willingness of Hubei characteristic town tourism and its influencing factors with the research results,it is found that the hindering factors of the willingness of Hubei characteristic town tourism at present: 1)the characteristic town positioning is vague,the characteristics are not obvious and the homogenization phenomenon is prominent;2)the characteristic town tourism infrastructure and related supporting services level is low;3)the characteristic town lacks cultural connotation and the level of tourism branding construction is low.In view of the current hindering factors,we propose the strategies to improve the tourism willingness of the characteristic towns in Hubei Province: 1)to carry out scientific and reasonable top-level design and clarify the future development ideas of the characteristic towns;2)to improve the tourism infrastructure construction of the characteristic towns and enhance the service and management level;3)to deeply explore the cultural connotation of the characteristic towns and create cultural scenes and characteristic IPs.