The reality of destination crowding has a long history, and the academic community has long been concerned with theoretical and empirical research on tourist crowding perceptions. However, there has not yet reached consensus on understanding of the role of tourist crowding perceptions in influencing tourist satisfaction, and even contradictory views have emerged. Therefore, the study conducts a meta-analysis of a sample of 39 independent studies to explore the relationship between tourists’ perception of crowding and its dimensions and tourist satisfaction, and focuses on the potential factors affecting the relationship between the two. The results show that (1) both tourist crowding perception and spatial crowding perception have a significant negative effect on tourist satisfaction, but visitor-flow crowding perception has a significant positive effect on tourist satisfaction. However, the correlation between tourist crowding perception/spatial crowding perception/crowd crowding perception and tourist satisfaction is not strong; (2) there is a moderating effect of tourist age and measurement tools in the relationship between tourist crowding perception and tourist satisfaction; (3) tourist gender and sample size cannot significantly affect the relationship between tourist crowding perception and satisfaction. The study used meta-analysis to validate the relationship between tourist crowding perception and its dimensions and tourist satisfaction, and revealed the factors affecting the transformation of tourist crowding perception to tourist satisfaction, which can provide a reference for destinations to formulate crowding management policies.
In the era of the internet and new media, the construction of internet-famous streets has become an important way to enhance the attractiveness of urban tourism. Based on agenda-setting theory, we chose Nimman Road, a typical internet-famous tourist street in Chiang Mai, Thailand as a case. This study collected second-hand data from the official websites of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and the Mafengwo tourism platform (including 23 travel blogs). Interviews with five tourists who had visited Nimman Road were also conducted to complement and validate the secondary data. Discourse analysis was performed to analyze the discourse practice of the image construction of internet-famous tourist street. The results show that (1) the Thai official website, Chinese platform and tourists jointly construct Nimman Road as a fashionable, elite-style and youth-friendly internet-famous tourist street. (2) The official describes Nimman Road as a fashionable and creative street, facing a relatively generalized audience; the tourism platform focuses on a specific customer group of youth and expresses directly Nimman Road as a place for young people to visit; the tourists modify their cognition through personal experience and actively express their true feelings on the internet. Their feedback plays a role in the construction process of the internet-famous street, providing proof of reverse agenda setting. (3) The symbols of Nimman Road, such as creativity, and elite-style, are shaped by the official discourse, reinforced by the platform discourse, and accepted by tourists to a certain extent. The discourses are influenced by the development process and features of the street, the precision of tourism distribution in the time of social media, and the social life in the transitional period.
In the era of mobile internet, there is a new competitive pattern and trend in short-form video marketing among tourism destinations. However, there has not been a systematic investigation on how short-form videos produce and market the tourism destination images. Starting from the meaning of short videos to people's life experience and existence, this paper took Wuzhen as an example, selected 8 popular short-form videos (4 official videos and 4 influencer videos) on the Douyin platform, and used comprehensive methods including netnography and field survey to analyze the thematic characteristics of Wuzhen’s tourism destination images in short-form videos. The results indicate that: (1) In terms of constituent elements of the tourism destination images, both official videos and influencer videos highly emphasize the outstanding universal value (OUV) of Wuzhen’s heritage value, natural ecological environment, and humanistic connotations. Besides that, the official videos also incorporate the nostalgic feeling of “home”. (2) In terms of thematic significance of the tourism destination images, Wuzhen is characterized as a place with three meanings, the taohuayuan (literally, peach blossom spring) — an ideal and utopic land of peace away from the turmoil of the world; the unique cultural “alien space”, and the “sacred nostalgic place” that allows people to calm down. (3) In terms of the production mechanism of the destination image, the official video emphasizes the “constructed authenticity”, and its anchor point is “beauty”; while the influencer video emphasizes the “objective authenticity”, and its anchor point is “truth”. This study provides a feasible analytical framework of “constituent elements + thematic meaning + authenticity” for video image data analysis: frame should be seen as the analysis unit; the conclusions should be interpreted around its thematic significance in the sense of being; and authenticity is the fundamental topic that cannot be avoided in video image data analysis. This study also points out that compared with the official channels, tourism managers need to pay attention to the value and role of internet influencers in contemporary short-form video tourism marketing.
With the deepening of the concept of “community of life between human and nature”, accelerating the theoretical innovation of river basin ecological civilization is an important task for adhering to and improving socialism with Chinese characteristics. Based on the epochal nature of ecological civilization construction and the specificity of river basins, and taking Xi Jinping’s thought on ecological civilization in the new era as the starting point, this paper intends to put forward the concept of socialist river basin ecological civilization with Chinese characteristics in the new era, and explains the connotation of the concept, the theoretical system, the elemental objects and the practical space involved. The study concludes: (1) socialist river basin ecological civilization with Chinese characteristics in the new era is rooted in Xi Jinping’s thought on ecological civilization, which is an extension of the river basin ecological civilization. It refers to the sum of various spiritual forms and material achievements that achieve high-quality development of the river basin from the perspective of harmonious coexistence and modernization between human and nature. (2) Socialist river basin ecological civilization with Chinese characteristics in the new era takes the concept of “Two Mountains” as its core theory, which is a systematic and interconnected conceptual system. (3) Socialist river basin ecological civilization with Chinese characteristics in the new era is aimed at river basins, pointing to clear elements, including both micro elements of “mountain, river, forest, field, lake, grass and sand”, and macro elements of “upstream and downstream, left and right banks, trunk and tributaries”. These two elements together constitute the “complex basin system” with the unity of object and function. (4) The space targeted by the practice of socialist river basin ecological civilization with Chinese characteristics in the new era follows the division form of production space, living space, and ecological space.
Recreation is a common trend in the utilization of reservoirs in various countries. Taking 4748 large and medium-sized reservoirs in China in 2022 as the research object, the study analyses the pattern of recreational utilization of reservoirs and its influencing factors at multiple scales. The results show that: (1) There are 636 recreational reservoirs in China, accounting for 13.40% of the total number of large and medium-sized reservoirs; the overall recreation utilization rate is low, and varies significantly among eastern, central and western regions of China, with the utilization rate of 11.14%, 15.60% and 13.05%, respectively; water-related recreation area systems are the dominant type of recreation reservoirs. (2) The number of recreational reservoirs in eastern, central and western regions of China accounts for 24.21%, 41.04% and 34.75%, respectively; except for Shanghai and Tibet, recreational reservoirs are distributed in 29 provincail-level regions, more concentrated in the Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and they are distributed in 262 cities out of the 333 prefecture-level cities; 92% of recreational reservoirs are located in areas with precipitation above 400 mm, the Yangtze River basin has the largest number, the river basins in southwest China have the lowest number, and the Huaihe River basin has the densest distribution. (3) The spatial structure is characterized by “one core and one belt”, the one core is Shandong province and the one belt is the band area connected by cities in the Yangtze River basin including Chengdu, Chongqing, Guiyang, Changsha and Nanchang. (4) Economic and social factors are main reasons for the spatial distribution differences in recreational reservoirs, 6 indicators such as the per capita disposable income in urban and rural areas, and fixed-asset investment are significant indicators; natural factors directly affect the formation of resource conditions and indirectly affect the transformation of recreational reservoirs. The study can provide a scientific foundation for improving the level of recreational use of large and medium-sized reservoirs and promoting the ecological protection and governance of important rivers, lakes and reservoirs in China.
Lakes are important tourist attractions on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which are very sensitive to environmental changes and human activities. In order to leverage the relationship of ecological protection, community development and tourism development, we established a tourism destination sustainability index system with the fuzzy Delphi method and analytic hierarchy process based on the stakeholder evaluation framework for sustainable ecotourism. Then, the index system was applied to Qinghai Lake and the relationship of “resource-community-tourism” was jointly evaluated by resource managers, community residents and tourists. Finally, a total of 31 indicators of 6 dimensions were obtained. The relationship between resource and communities obtained the highest weight among the three groups, which reflected the resource-dependent characteristics and green development needs of the lake tourism communities on the plateau. The expert group believed that the ecological index selection for plateau lake destinations should attach importance to biodiversity and environmental conservation from the regional ecosystem perspective. The application of the evaluation method in Qinghai Lake shows its applicability and effectiveness. This paper enhances the participation of stakeholders in the index system establishment for relationship evaluation and provides an alternative method for assessing the sustainability of lake destinations on the plateau with insufficient monitoring data. It can provide decision-making support for a coordinated green development of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
Achieving a sense of well-being for tourists contributes to the social well-being of river and lake tourism destinations. Adopting the constructive grounded theory, this paper explores the elements of tourist well-being in river and lake scenarios and its embodied generating mechanisms. The study finds that: (1) Tourist well-being in the river and lake scenarios consists of positive emotion, immersion, social connection, accomplishment, and self-discovery, of which positive emotion, immersion, and social connection are mainly hedonic well-being. In contrast, accomplishment and self-discovery are mainly eudaimonic well-being. (2) The generation of tourists well-being in river and lake scenarios is the result of the dynamic interaction ofthe presence and absence of tourist’s body with the scenarios. The tourists’ present body generates well-being through embodied experiences (multisensory perceptions, body movements or behaviors, situational interactions, memories and associations) in river and lake tourism scenarios. The tourists’ absent body generates well-being expecta-tions and well-being precipitations through interaction with daily and tourist scenarios. (3) There is a bidirectional constructive relationship between the river and lake tourists’ embodied experience and the sense of well-being. The well-being generated by the tourists will prompt the body to interact with the scenarios again to gain embodied experience, which in turn generates a sense of well-being again. The findings of the study have theoretical and practical value for enhancing tourist well-being in the river and lake tourism scenarios.
Rafting recreation is one of the forms of ecotourism mainly based on river and lake recreation sports, and rafters, rafting water, rafting industry and rafting environment are the symbiotic subjects constituting the rafting recreation system. This paper uses CiteSpace visualization and analysis software, and draws on the theory of “four-component system of ecotourism”, and then analyzes the relevant research results of Web of Science, and finally reaches the following conclusions: The research on rafting recreation lags behind the practice in general, and there was an obvious discontinuity before the 1990s. The research covers the heterogeneity, motivation, experience perception, physical and mental impacts of rafters, scenic river system, flow rate and water quality, rafting safety management, product development and sustainable development of the industry, and the requirements of facilities and activity control in rafting sites. In general, the research perspective has shifted from focusing on the realization of the single goal of the “four-component” to taking into account the elements, and then to the synergy of multiple goals, but the unidimensional study of the “four-component” needs to be deepened, and the synergistic relationship and interaction mechanism with the external environment of the “four-component” need to be improved. It is suggested that China’s rafting recreation research should learn from existing achievements, further deepen the unidimensional research on the “four-component”, and at the same time strengthen the systematic view of the “people-environment-industry” symbiosis, expand the research on the synergistic mechanism of the “four-component” as well as on the mutual influence between the “four-component” and the external environment, so as to provide scientific references for the development of ecotourism in rivers and lakes, as well as for the construction of river and lake protected area systems.
Under the double-wheel drive of new urbanization and rural revitalization strategy, suburban townships have become an important spatial reconstruction zone. Adopting the actor network theory, we discuss the spatial reconstruction process and mechanism of Anren “World Cultural and Museum Town”. The results show that: (1) the actors in Anren Ancient Town include human actors such as local government, tourism development companies, art and architecture designers and residents, as well as non-human actors such as cultural relics collection, museum complexes, and rural landscapes. The development of the actor network in Anren Ancient Town has gone through three stages: power capital led, cultural capital led, and economic capital led. (2) In the construction of long-term heterogeneous actor networks, Anren Ancient Town has kept adopting diverse processes of recruitment and mobilization, such as cultural recruitment, educational recruitment, brand linkage, and artistic recruitment, to promote the formation of a dynamic actor network in Anren Ancient Town. (3) Under the background of the double-wheel drive of new urbanization and rural revitalization strategy, the final spatial reconstruction of Anren Ancient Town is mainly manifested as quality consum- ption space, humanistic and aesthetic ecological space and multi-functional production space of the ancient town. While preserving the rural space, the town also reconstructs the rural landscape and forms an inseparable “urban-rural” aesthetic ecosystem with the built-up area of the ancient town.
Tourism-driven rural transformation is a key solution to revitalize the rural areas. Based on the perspective of Actor Network Theory, we analyze the actor composition and translation paths of rural transformation in Zhuquan Villages in Yinan County as a case study, and explore the process and mechanism of multiple actors driving the village transformation from a poor village to one of the most beautiful village in China. The results show that: (1) Multiple key actors such as Yinan County government, planning team and investment developers, together with human or non-human actors such as the Village committee, villagers, bamboo forest and spring, formed during the transformation of Zhuquan village are the subjects of heterogeneous actor network construction. (2) The transformation of Zhuquan Village is characterized by stages, with the initial stage being the construction of a network of actors through administrative recruitment by the county government to ensure the decision of rural tourism. The mid-term planning team coordinated to resolve key differences among different stakeholders in the transformation process and clarify the direction of the transformation of Zhuquan Village. Later on, the investment company developed and operated the tourist attraction through a variety of conscription methods such as capital and land, which realized the coordinated development of the tourist attraction and the construction of the new village and promoted the transformation of the rural village. (3) The transformation process of Zhuquan Village is inseparable from the joint drive of key actors, and the sharing of benefits among multiple actors is a guarantee for the sustainable transformation of the village. The paper analyzes the process of continuous reconstruction of the actor network to drive rural transformation, which can provide useful reference for optimal decision-making on rural transformation at different stages of development.
Ethnic villages are rich in tourism resources, such as culture and ecology, and tourism development has become an important driver of their reconstruction. Taking Puzhihei Xianrendong Village as a case, this paper explores the process and mechanism of tourism promoting the reconstruction of ethnic villages by using the methods of fieldwork, in-depth interview and participatory observation. The research indicates that: (1) driven by tourism, the development of Xianrendong Village has gone through three stages: exploration, accelerated transformation and system reconstruction. (2) The transformation of traditional agriculture and fishery to tourism functions such as sightseeing and recreation, cultural experience and leisure vacation has led to the diversification of villagers’ livelihood and the upgrading of village industrial structure, thus promoting the reconstruction of rural economy; the development of tourism industry promotes the protection and landscape utilization of production, living and ecological space, accelerates the compound utilization and integrated development of “production-living-ecology space”, and promotes the reconstruction of rural space. The development of tourism industry has promoted the diversification of rural governance subjects and improved the enthusiasm of villagers to participate in rural governance. The traditional self-governance system based on the social relations of bloodline and acquaintances has transformed to the modern “three-governance” system with the core of the business relationship and system. (3) Tourism promotes the goal enhancement, motivation stimulation, factor integration, community participation and normative restriction in the development of ethnic villages, and then forms a virtuous circle mechanism of value vision renewal, core motivation transformation, development factors integration, expansion of participants, optimization of out-of-order regulation, and promotes the reconstruction of rural economy, space, and social systems.
Subjective well-being embodies the value kernel of tourism development to promote sustainable livelihoods of residents. This paper constructs an analytical framework and indicator system from the perspective of livelihood capital, and applies fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the complex impact of livelihood capital on residents’ subjective well-being by taking Simolawa Village in Tengchong, Yunnan Province, as a case study, in order to reveal the configuration paths affecting the subjective well-being of residents in tourism sites. The study shows that residents of Simolawa Village generally have higher levels of subjective well-being, with higher satisfaction in environmental aspects and relatively low economic satisfaction; a single dimension of livelihood capital cannot be a necessary condition for enhancing the subjective well-being of residents in tourist destinations, but it has an important impact on subjective well-being, with cultural, psychological, social, and financial capitals, in particular, being the most critical; cultural + psychological + financial capital, cultural + psychological + financial + physical capital, social + cultural + financial capital, the three combinations constitute the main configuration path of factors influencing the subjective well-being of residents in tourist destinations. The study helps to deepen the theoretical knowledge of how tourism can enhance people's well-being and show the attributes of the happiness industry, and provides a basis for decision-making to improve the subjective well-being of residents in tourist destinations.
