Rural Tourism Development
Based on Chinese government planning 2009-2015
Supervisor: Jacob Larsen
Hanh Duc Dao
Kun Wei
Student number: 20063449
Student number: 20091659
Keystrokes: 81.051
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Acknowledgements
To friends and family that understood the extensive pressure that lay upon our shoulders
but nevertheless always supported us and opened up our eyes to the world outside.
We would like to express our sincere appreciation to our supervisor, Mr Jacob Larsen,
who guided the whole process of this project with valuable advice and who has spend
endless hours reading and revising our project. Jacob’s advices helped us a lot. Many
thanks to him!
The cover page pictures are from the webpage of
www.shanghaiist.com/.../shanghaicrowd030807.jpg
www.iacmr.org/.../Shanghai/281105_Shanghai.jpg
http://facts-about-china.com/top-10-most-beautiful-forest-park-attractions-in-china/
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TABLE CONTENT
1.
2.
3.
INTRODUCTION (KUN AND HANH).......................................................................... 5
1.1.
JUSTIFICATION OF STUDY ............................................................................................................ 6
1.2.
PROBLEM STATEMENT ............................................................................................................... 6
1.3.
BRIEFLY DESCRIPTION OF TOURISM IN CHINA.................................................................................. 7
1.4.
STRUCTURE OF THE PROJECT....................................................................................................... 8
METHODOLOGY (KUN AND HANH)......................................................................... 9
2.1.
RESEARCH MODEL .................................................................................................................... 9
2.2.
HERMENEUTICS...................................................................................................................... 10
2.3.
DATA COLLECTION .................................................................................................................. 10
2.4.
LIMITATION ........................................................................................................................... 11
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK (KUN –HANH) ..................................................... 13
3.1.
DEFINITION OF RURAL TOURISM (KUN) ....................................................................................... 13
3.2.
THE DEFINITION OF SOCIO-CULTURAL IMPACT (KUN) ..................................................................... 14
3.3.
SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY (HANH) ........................................................................................... 15
3.4.
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES OF SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY (HANH) ..................................................... 16
4.
RURAL TOURISM DEVELOPMENT (HANH)......................................................... 22
5.
AUTHENTICITY (KUN-HANH).................................................................................. 25
5.1.
DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF AUTHENTICITY (KUN) ............................................................................... 25
5.2.
AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE (KUN) ................................................................................................. 26
5.3.
6.
5.2.1.
Objective authenticity .......................................................................................... 26
5.2.2.
Constructive authenticity ..................................................................................... 27
5.2.3.
Existential Authenticity ........................................................................................ 27
THE CONNECTION AMONG OBJECTIVE AUTHENTICITY, SOCIAL EXCHANGE AND TOURISM (HANH) ............ 28
ANALYSIS (KUN-HANH)............................................................................................. 32
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6.1.
RURAL TOURISM IN CHINA (KUN) .............................................................................................. 32
6.2.
SOCIO-CULTURAL IMPACTS IN RURAL TOURISM IN CHINA(HANH) ..................................................... 33
6.3.
6.4.
6.2.1.
Socio-cultural benefits.......................................................................................... 33
6.2.2.
Socio-cultural impacts .......................................................................................... 34
OVERVIEW OF CHINESE GOVERNMENT PLANNING FOR RURAL TOURISM DEVELOPMENT (2009-2015) .... 35
6.3.1.
Introduction(Kun) ................................................................................................. 35
6.3.2.
Basic principles of rural tourism development(Kun) ............................................ 36
6.3.3.
Development orientation and goal (Kun)............................................................. 36
6.3.4.
The main task for rural tourism development (Kun) ............................................ 36
ANALYSIS OF CHINESE GOVERNMENT PLANNING FOR RURAL TOURISM DEVELOPMENT (KUN-HANH) ........ 37
7.
CONCLUSION (KUN-HANH) ...................................................................................... 41
8.
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 44
9.
APPENDIX ..........................................................................................................................
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1. INTRODUCTION
Tourism has become one of the industries with strongest development element and
largest scale in global economy. It has grown in significance and emerged as a global
phenomenon, affecting an increasing range of environments and attracting new markets
as opportunities for travel have widened (Kazakhstan, 2007). Tourism has variety
impact on economic, socio-cultural and environmental factors (Page and Connell,
2006). In this project, socio-cultural impacts will be the only aspect taken and analyzed
through Chinese government planning for rural tourism development 2009-2015 due to
Chinese government has extremely concentrated on economic factor and poverty
alleviation through developing rural tourism (Gao, et al, 2009). We assume that this
could bring to the consequences in terms of socio-cultural perspective for rural tourism
such as the changing of rural culture, landscapes and so on.
Socio-cultural impacts will occur by the immediately changes of life quality and the
changes in the tourism destination (Page and Connell, 2006). Socio-cultural impact will
be created by locals, tourists and government and so on from both positive and negative
sides. Modern social exchange theory was born from the works of Homans (1961),
Levis Strauss (1969), and Emerson (1972) in Ap (1992). According to Ap (1992), social
exchange theory refers to the understanding of the exchange process that happens
between individual and groups in social interaction process through tourism. And it
refers to what is being given and returned as what is rewarded and approved. Based on
Bryon and Derre (2009), tourists who want to experience authenticity should interact
with local people as the most important activity, local people play an important role to
make tourists feeling more authentic within the area.
On this research scope, the project realize domestic tourists are either the potential
tourism target group or bring significant impact on socio-culture in rural tourism
development in China, therefore in our project, when we mention about hosts or tourists
that means basically domestic tourism group. This project describes the different
authentic perspectives and focuses as well as applies objective authenticity (rural
tourism products) because domestic tourists are indeed interested in objective
authenticity. This project will be enlightened the connection among the objective
authenticity, social exchange theory and rural tourism as a part helps answer for our
questions. In addition, we will analyze the Chinese government planning that plays vital
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role in both the development of rural tourism and the impacts of tourism on socioculture.
1.1. Justification of study
Government can directly control the tourism development and tourism planning by the
intervention (Yang, 2008).Chinese government has extremely concentrated on
economic factor and poverty alleviation through developing rural tourism (Gao et al,
2009). This leads to the lack of necessary and sufficient concerns in preservation sociocultural perspective. Yang (2008) stated that government start to evolve from the
significant economic issues turn to concern about the socio-cultural impact, power
relationships and environmental sensitivity and so on; in fact, policy may result in
unintended negative consequences (2008:751). In particular, rural tourism is still a new
market within the tourism industry (Shen et al, 2007). Therefore, it is worth to consider
the government planning for rural tourism development 2009-2015 and find out whether
the government planning will bring positive impact to the rural tourism development or
negative impacts.
1.2. Problem statement
The main research problems for this project are:
What are the impacts of tourism on socio-cultural perspective in rural area in
China?
How the Chinese governments avoid changing socio-culture in rural area in
China?
In order to examine the factors which effect the rural tourism development, the research
team formulated the following two hypotheses: Sharpley (1994) defined that the impact
of socio-cultural can influence by tourism industries different perspectives of tourism
development will bring less or more impacts of socio-cultural. The less impact of sociocultural can influence by tourism industry which do not really rely on tourism as an
economic tool to earn.
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There is positive socio-cultural impact for rural tourism development based on the
government planning.
The role of government in tourism development is important and the government has
identified five areas of public sector involvement in tourism: coordination, planning,
legislation and regulation, entrepreneur, and stimulation (Hall, 2008). Wang (2007:42)
stated that development of rural tourism is highly affected by the government
management.
The government’s policy tends to invest in rural area are for better rather than worse in
terms of socio-cultural perspective.
1.3. Briefly description of tourism in China
China has one of the largest tourism markets in the world today based on its long
history and rich culture (Lew and Yu, 1995). It has been the highest rate growth in
significance of certain outbound market in the last decade (Page and Connell, 2006).
According to China National Tourism Administration (2002), tourism industry in China
is planning to provide about 40 million jobs in the next ten years. Travel Daily (2009)
also reported that tourism industry in China was taking 4% of GDP growth for the
moment, and it will make up 7% of China’s GDP by 2010. In the future, China will
become the most important tourism market in the world and tourism will become the
pillar industry of economic development (Ball et al, 2007).
Rural tourism can be basically seen the tourism that takes place in rural area with nature
resources and culture heritages (Siemens, 2007). China’s rural tourism industry received
over 400 million tourists and rural tourism revenue exceeded RMB60 billion in 2008. It
accounts about 23% and 8% of China’s total received tourists and total tourism revenue.
Chinese government will continue to promote rural tourism by a development planning,
and the purpose to develop rural tourism is going to achieve over 800 million tourists
with more than RMB 120 billion tourism revenue, and create directly and indirectly
employment 10 million and 40 million by 2015 (China economic review, 2009).
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1.4. Structure of the Project
This project is organized into seven chapters. Chapter one covers the introduction and
includes research problems, background of rural tourism in China and structure of the
project. Chapter two is made up of the research model, research data collection and
limitation, while chapter three describes theoretical framework. Chapter four made up
of the general view of rural tourism development in China, meanwhile mention different
perspective of authenticity in chapter five. In chapter six consist of the analysis based on
the Chinese government planning and theories. The last chapter is consisting of the
conclusion and suggestions for the further research.
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2. METHODOLOGY
The aim of this part is to identify different research methods which will help for the data
collection and bring the different benefits for the further researching analysis. First, we
describe the Research Model in general; based on the research model can help us to
analyze the problem more clear. There are two different problems have been defined by
using hypotheses method. Secondly, following the research process, we describe the
different methods which be adopted for our project research. The chapter will end with
a limitation for our project writing.
2.1. Research model
Empirical study
Chinese government
planning for rural tourism
development (2009-2015)
Rural tourism
development in China
Theoretical
study
Socio-culture impacts of
tourism
development in rural
area in China
This research model shows a conceptual framework of empirical study and theoretical
study. The empirical study that we will use on this research is Chinese government
planning. And theoretical study is social exchange theory that enlightens the connection
between case study and theory which will influence the Chinese rural tourism
development in the future. The linkage between Chinese government planning and
socio-culture impact would be explained how the government planning will influence
the socio-culture factors. Malhotra and Birks (2007) defined that hypothesis is the
researcher define a factor or phenomenon which is a proposition or unproven for
researcher are interesting to do the research. It might be an assumption statement about
the relationship between two or more factors as prescribed by the theoretical framework
or analytical model.
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2.2. Hermeneutics
Bryman (2008: ) defined that hermeneutics is concerned with the theory and method of
the interpretation of human action, the analyst should understand and represent the
meaning of a text from different social and historical context from the authors. That
means when we are reading a text, we need to concern the variety of the context of
authors. It would be occurred if the original text was justified by the others, then the
next readers may not be able to understand completely objectively.
But when we are reading this Chinese government planning, we could fully understand
why Chinese government made a tourism planning like that in consideration of the
background of China. Therefore, it would help us to define the problems with our preunderstanding of Chinese rural tourism development to doing our analysis.
In order to understand Chinese planning for rural tourism development 2009-2015 for
those who are not Chinese speakers, the original text was translated by one of our
Chinese girl in the group who has studied English for many years. The most translation
was just directly translated from Chinese to English without adding any personal
opinion and emotion. Due to the different meaning and culture background, the
translation was not adhering strictly from word to word, and most the translation was
made only relevant for this project research. But even it is briefly and short, it is still the
truth. It might be not easy for readers totally understand the whole text with different
context, language habit and culture background but it is still a chance to have a brief
overview of Chinese government planning for rural tourism development in general.
2.3. Data collection
Project analysis for this project will only base on the secondary data. Secondary data
was not collected by researchers; it was collected by the others and the time and expense
of researchers may be saved for the data collection (Bryman, 2008). That means A
adapts the result from someone else who created the data by themselves from
questionnaire or interview etc, then the result for A is called secondary data. Churton
(2000:167) defined that secondary data include: office of population census, social
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trends figures, personal documents and diaries, and so on. It is very useful for
researchers who are not able to access and collect their own data and it is also quick and
cheap to use it (Churton, 2000).
In this project, all the data was collected from empirical materials (Chinese government
planning), theoretical materials (books, journals) and official statistics (background of
rural tourism development). Bryman (2008) examined the official statistics are
sometimes less mention about the error that are relation to two variety data, but
represent a form of unobtrusive method and especially lack of reactivity (2008:311).
2.4. Limitation
We will not ignore some limitations existing in this our project and somehow
restraining our research following. At first, there was some trouble finding
comprehensive and through information about “Rural Tourism development in China”
in English. By typing “rural tourism” in Chinese we were able to research this topic
much easier.
There are some others limitations such as time and distance. That is limited time for this
project only about two months and therefore, we could not have condition to go China
and make questionnaires as well as interview with relating actors in our research such as
people who are working in tourism industry in China. Therefore this report only
includes the secondary data. Sometimes it is hard to rely on the secondary data,
especially if it is taken for the internet. So we are not satisfied with the secondary data
because these data based on surveys from other social researches, thus they differ with
our researching purpose, and so they do not meet completely our norms. For examples,
the data may not collect in our purpose, we need to restructure and pick up the most
relevant information for us and even we do not know how other researchers collected
data on their own purpose could. There is a lot of information we try to find out through
the official sites but it was not easy to find some information in connection to the topic
because rural tourism is still a new tourism market in China. But most of the
information we are using for our project were taken from official tourism website in
China.
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At last, it is very important to collect the data that can be used in writing the assignment.
The data should be relevant and updated but unfortunately it is hard to get the first-hand
information such as the growth of domestic tourists travel to rural area. Hence, the
information might be changed from year to year or even from day to day, the data may
no longer be relevant or recent enough to be useful (Churton, 2000:167).
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3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
3.1. Definition of rural tourism
Siemens (2007) stated that rural tourism can be basically seen the tourism that takes
place in rural area. Page and Getz (1997) also assumed that rural tourism has almost the
equal concept with countryside: therefore the formulation of tourists is not the main user
groups in countryside. In fact, the definition of rural is not easy to define in different
countries, because the national government uses specific criteria such as the
differentiation of national population in between urban and rural (Page and Getz, 1997).
In Page and Connell (2006) divided rural area into two different types: remote rural
area and accessible rural area. In this project, we are going to look at rural area in
general.
Rural tourism is one of the systems of tourism just like culture tourism which uses
countryside as one of its sources (Lebe and Milfelner, 2006). Based on the EU
documents on rural tourism pointed out that rural area as a destination to visit where
enjoyment of the countryside and countryside activities is a primary motive (Lebe and
Milfelner, 2006:1138). Lebe and Milfelner (2006) also described that rural tourism is
the activities of persons travelling to and staying in rural areas; without mass tourism;
other than those of their usual environment for less than one consecutive year for
leisure, business and other purpose (2006:1139). Rural tourism linked to nature can
also include different type’s activities and sport, peace and quiet, traditional culture and
custom and traditional way of life (Siemens, 2007).
Today, rural tourism is also an important embodiment for adjusting agricultural
structure, transforming the increasing way of agricultural economy and developing
domestic tourism in the round (Shen et al, 2007). On the other hand, rural tourism
becomes an important driving force to promote the development of rural industries such
as: increasing farmer’s income and develop a harmonious rural society etc (Chinese
government planning for 2009-2015, 2009).
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3.2. The definition of socio-cultural impact
Murphy in Page and Connell (2006) stated that tourism is a socio-cultural event for the
traveler and the host. The social and cultural impact is more difficult to obviously
present than economic impact (Tribe, 2006). The immediately changes of life quality
and the changes in the tourism destination will occur the social impact. Travis
(1982:259) also emphasized that “the social impact of tourism will vary according to
the differences between the visitors and the visited, whether in terms of numbers, race,
cultures, or social outlook”. And the cultural impact shows that the norms and standards
of society changes in a long time, even the product and forms of the material has been
changed (Teo, 1994). Holloway stated that:
“The social and cultural impact on a host country of large numbers of people, sharing
different value systems and away from the constraints of their own environment is a
subject increasingly drawing the attention of social scientists and planners, especially
those responsible for developing tourism in the Third World” (Holloway. 1998:326).
Social and cultural impacts have both positive and negative impacts from tourism
development (Page and Connell, 2006):
General Positive impacts
Tourism may help to improve and bring some benefits to locals such as income,
employment opportunities, education, local infrastructure and service. Tourism creates
an opportunity to both host and guest to understand with each other by different culture
background. For instance host country could adapt something from guest country what
they are lacking. Tourism could also create the tourists’ respect for the religion and
increase awareness of traditional lifestyle in local (Page and Connell, 2006).
General Negative impacts
First, tourism may create the threat to the local society and destroy the traditional value
of the culture. Tourists will destroy the traditional culture when they are travelling to
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somewhere else, but host in some way will destroy the traditional culture also based on
the different perspectives of tourism. For instance, host may concern more about tourist’
demand if tourists bring a huge benefit to them, therefore, traditional products lose the
reality turn to the commercialization. Second, tourism could change host’ attitude, value
or behavior and traditional lifestyles, such as young people may very easily influenced
by tourists in terms of the different level of wealth and economic issues, perhaps they
might change the way from traditional lifestyle or even move away from home (Page
and Connell, 2006).
3.3. Social exchange theory
Perdue et al (1990) described shortly about social exchange theory as an appropriate
application for explaining about the impacts of tourism on the tourist destination and the
acceptance of residence. Sutton (1967) realized that the social exchange process (social
interaction of travel) happening between host ands guests was identified as touring
encounter. The encounter “may provide either an opportunity for rewarding and
satisfying exchanges, or it may stimulate and reinforce impulses to exploitation on the
part of the host, and to suspicion and resentment on the part of the visitors” (Sutton,
1967:221).
Modern social exchange theory was born from the works of Homans (1961), Levis
Strauss (1969), and Emerson (1972) (Ap, 1992). In general, the exchange theory refers
to the understanding of the exchange process that happens between individual and
groups in interaction process (Ap, 1992). According to Moschesti, Levi and Jacob in Ap
(1992), the application of exchange theory can be found in many specific cases in the
common situations for example, gift giving marriage and kinship, organization
behavior, management, marketing, and so on. In the leisure situations, the application of
social exchange theory only recognized in some cases, outdoor recreation satisfaction,
and recreation management decision-making and muses (Ap, 1992:668).
According to Watchel et al in Ap (1992), social exchange theory in tourism industry as
is applied as transactional approaches and appeared in tourism settings used
transactional approach to investigate the tourist relationship and management-employee
relationship in the hospitality field.
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Some of theories enabled to enlighten tourism impacts on socio-cultural perspective
such as development theory, dependence theory, and cultural theory but as matter of
fact, none of them is able to provide the appropriate framework to explain for our case
better than social exchange theory. Meanwhile, social exchange theory is able to
enlighten both positive and negative impacts of tourism on socio-cultural perspective in
rural area via social exchange process and exchange relationships between individual or
collective level. We will combine the concept of the authenticity with social exchange
theory to examine our case because socio-cultural perspective is related to the concept
of the objective authenticity. Social exchange process would bring an apparent outcome
that is as a result of the change of the objective authenticity. The connection among
objective authenticity, social exchange theory and tourism will be enlightened in the
next parts.
3.4. Different perspectives of social exchange theory
In the 1950s, a prominent theoretical development was the emergence of exchange
theory (Molm, 2001) however that is only the first brick of exchange theory for
researchers to extend this theory later. In this period, the person who plays important
role for the development of exchange theory is George Hormans (Ritzer, 2007). The
heart of his view in this theory is the study of individual and individual behavior as well
as interaction. According to Homans’s view, the history of rewards and costs that lead
people to do what they would do (Ibid, 2007). In addition, Homans (1961) realized that
people exist in the society and try to interact with other people rather than existing as
isolated actors. Homans endeavored to explain social behavior with psychological
principles via social interaction, the social exchange process (Ibid, 2007)
Fundamentally, Homans in Ritzer (2007) argued that people keep doing what they have
recognized to be rewarding in the past. On the contrary, they stop doing what has
demonstrated to be costly in the past, Thus in order to understand behavior, it is
necessary to discover an individual’s history of rewards and costs. Moreover, exchange
theory is considered either individual behavior or interaction process what happen
between people associating with exchange of rewards and costs (Ibid, 2007). Kenneth et
al (1980) also mention about the rule of exchange via giving and receiving process that
is related to specific cultural rules. The rule of exchange in this case means to similar to
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rewards and costs somehow. It refers to what is being given and returned as what is
rewarded and approved.
The concept of reward and cost is understandable such as one of the socio-cultural
benefits in terms of understanding and peace and this process occurs among hosts and
tourists. The socio-cultural benefit might gain through tourism. Gartner (1996)
mentioned the root of cultural differences among groups, organizations or nations is
basically from the background of the complicated social relationships that are
formulated in isolated relations from single units. The process between giving and
receiving from specific cultural rules is able to reduce minimize the misunderstanding
between social groups and this process has enabled to occur through tourism
development. Reduction in misunderstanding might bring peace between groups or
organizations. Dann in Gartner (1996) argued that tourism is one of the ways to promote
understanding and processing social and economic exchange.
The social exchange takes place between individual actors and this process is vital for
mutual understanding and learning process, and tourism enabled to the social exchange
to happen (Gartner, 1996). Gpamer in Gartner (1996) mentioned how the communicated
process and social interactions between host and tourist bring to the changes in ethnic
issue in two communities in Austria. In another example, Gartner (1996) described how
the transaction between host and tourist take place through the performance of host’s
bed and breakfast service in Great Britain. The main feature of two examples mentioned
above is related to the relationships between hosts and tourists in tourism activities that
lead to the socio-cultural rewards in terms of peace and understanding based on
discovering from different cultures via tourism (Gartner, 1996).
Blau in (Ritzers, 2007) concentrated on the process of exchange that is in connection
with human behavior and be covered by relationship among persons as well as among
groups, organizations. Blau provided a four-stage sequence that leads from
interpersonal exchange to social structure to social change:
“Step 1: personal exchange transaction between people give rise to …
Step 2: differentiation of status and power, which lead to…
Step 3: legitimization and organization, which sow the seeds of…
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Step 4: opposition and change” (Ibid, 2007:423).
Blau adopted Homans’s view and extended his theory in terms of relationship between
social interaction and social structure. Social structure is the outcome of social
interaction that is associated with each other, not independently. People are drawn to a
group when they feel that the relationship offer more rewards than those from other
groups (Ritzers, 2007). They wanted to join with the groups that they are attracted, thus
they need to be accepted. In order to be accepted they have to give rewards, that is an
exchange process and social interaction. Blau moved to societal level and he realized
the existence of social organization. That is significantly different between Blau and
social behaviorists on this point (Ibid, 2007).
According to Blau, norms and values are considered like the mechanism that mediate
among the intricate social structures that present in society:
“Commonly agreed upon values and norms serve as media of social life and as
mediating links for social transactions. They make indirect social exchange possible,
and they govern the processes of social integration and differentiation in complex social
structures as well as the development of social organization and reorganization in
them” (Blau, 1964:255).
In the definition of the norm, Blau tends to the exchange process between individual
and collectivity, meanwhile the concept of values leads him to the large-scale societal
level (Ritzer, 2007).
Highlight of Homans’ proposition of exchange theory is individual and individual
behavior that is far from Baus’analysis. Bau’s view brought out and discussed about
groups, organization, collectivities, norms and values. His analysis is concentrated on
what sticks social components together and what divides them apart, apparently
traditional concerns of the social elements. He argued that the exchange theory was
extended to societal level although he emphasized that processes at societal level differ
fundamentally at the individual level. He gradually recognized and extended the
exchange theory in tends macro-level, structural phenomena (Ibid, 2007).
The concept of norm and values is concerned in this case as cultural values, traditions or
customs that belong to socio-cultural perspective. Tourism provides opportunities for
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hosts and tourists to achieve these values. The groups of people from different culture
have social interaction in order to understanding each other and gain education or more
knowledge via tourism. Learning from individual, group or organization’s values and
traditions is as a means of enriching knowledge (Gartner, 1996). This learning process
provides chances for both hosts and tourists in educational enrichment. For hosts, they
gain educational values from hosts in this case more associated with the kind of service
skills required that is important to be activated in tourism area. For tourists, they can
gain pretty benefits from tourism via travelling such as local cultural values, traditions
and so on, more than in books (Gartner, 1996).
The beginning of a new period in the development of social exchange theory was
noticeable by Richard Emerson, he published a vital paper on power-dependence
relation in 1962 and it was associated with two essays written in 1972 (Cook and
Whitmeyer, 2000). Molm and Cook indicated Emerson’s view via three fundamental
elements as the paramount of his exchange theory (Ritzer, 2007). The first element of
Emerson’s proposition is related to power dependence and he was concerned about
exchange theory as a broader framework. It seems apparently that the center of the
exchange theory is power. Second, Emerson also based on behaviorism as the
fundament element of his exchange theory but he tried to avoid some of the problems
that were influent to Homans. Homans and other exchange theorists had some negative
assumptions for the human beings behavior. Third, Emerson wanted to face with social
structure and social change by using “social relations and social networks as building
blocks that spanned different levels of analysis” (Molm and Cook, 1995:215).
In two essays published in 1972, Emerson developed the basis of his integration in
exchange theory. On the first essay, based on psychological factors, he faced with social
exchange; in the meantime, he focused on macro-level and exchange relations and
exchange network structures on the second essay. Using the concept exchange network
is helpful to connect between the isolated individual and widely combines or collection
of individual such as groups or associations, organizations, political parties and so on
(Whitmeyer in Ritzer 2007).
Both Emerson and Cook adopted that the exchange theory is formulated on the
fundamental, micro-level (Ritzer, 2007) and Emerson says “The exchange approach
takes as its first focus of attention the benefits people obtain from, and contribute to, the
process of social interaction” (1981:31). The benefits that people gain via social
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process are based on the benefits that they can be generate in exchange, providing
exchange theory “its focus [on] the flow of benefits through social interaction”
(Emerson, 1981:33). At the macro level of the exchange theory, Emerson’s view is
expressed on two actors, individuals or collectivities. He is considered the exchange
process happening among actors that lead to change of social structure (Cook et al,
1983).
The concept of “benefit through social interactions” (Emerson, 1981:33) is
understandable as benefits that hosts and tourists achieve via social interactions based
on tourism process “Benefit through social interactions” (Ibid, 1981:33) include
basically economic and socio-cultural benefits. The economy in rural area might not
meet the employment due to the increase in population meanwhile tourism might
provide employment chances (Gartner, 1996).
On the one hand, tourism might be the dramatic increase in employment opportunities,
and improving the living standard for local residents, on the other hand, it might lead to
protecting and preserving traditional culture. The tourist is interested in traditional
culture and visits local places. Tourism is developed based on local values and brings
benefits for local people. Local people realize this, thus they are more concerned about
preserving their traditional culture and local values (Gartner, 1996). The prominent
socio-cultural benefits through tourism social interactions might be understanding and
peace as well as education, as mentioned above or in the equality of gender in the
society. Another benefit is the given role of women and young members particularly in
making-decision due to they play an important role in the tourism development as
household production, tourism services and they participate in working outside more
than before (Ibid, 1996).
Sub conclusion
In this chapter we try to overview the social exchange theory that applies for explaining
our case study. Socio-cultural perspective plays a vital role in rural tourism
development and rural tourism development leads to the impacts on socio-cultural
perspective via social exchange process and changes of social structure in rural area.
First, we consider the birth of exchange theory with important role of founder of
modern exchange theory George Homans. Homans provided some propositions of
exchange theory at the micro level. Second, we go to describe the content of theory with
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different proposition of exchange theorists. Blau contributed to extend exchange theory
to macro level and highlighted on importance of values and norms. Following Blau is
Emerson’s view with extended social structure between individual and organization. On
the next part, we will write about rural tourism development that provides the logical
sequence for the impact of tourism on socio-cultural perspective in rural area.
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4. RURAL TOURISM DEVELOPMENT
On this part, we will describe the history of rural tourism development in general and
the historical process of rural tourism development in China. In addition, we point out
the original root of the growth of rural tourism in China that affects significantly on
socio-cultural perspective through social interactions.
According to Sharpley in Page and Connell (2006), in the late 1850s, the rise of rural
tourism is considered as a phenomenal activity in Europe; however this tourism activity
is probably characterized as the activities backward through history because the
tendency of tourists more focus on being with nature. Tourists especially the first-class
tourists are suddenly attracted by natural landscape: wild forest, mountainous areas such
as the Canadian Rockies, the Swiss Alps and the English Lake District, gradually rural
tourism extends to the middle-class tourists (Ibid, 2006).
The growth of rural tourism in China differs with Europe and North America, China
started to develop rural tourism since the early 1980s meanwhile, this process in Europe
began over 100 years ago. Another main difference and importance of the rural tourism
growth in China is the root of rural tourism development from economic factor (Gao et
al, 2008). According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, in 2006, the
population of China in rural areas was 737.4 million, being 56.1% of the total
population in China (NBSC, 2007) and the majority rural population lived under the
poverty standard, due to Chinese government desire to gain the purpose of poverty
alleviation through tourism (Gao et al, 2008).
In Europe, rural tourism begins its developing process in 1863 based on health and
mountain sports by the mark of Thomas Cook’s first package tour with his trip to rural
Switzerland. The growth of rural tourism is realizable clearly until the twentieth century
such as in California the growth of rural tourism is as a certain consequence of the
combination between the development of new technology and the policy of tourism
promotion. (Page and Connell, 2006)
Chinese government plays an important role in the success or failure of the developing
process in tourism in rural area. The future prosperity of rural community depends on
the tourism strategy and the possibility of predicted tourism impacts through the
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government’s strategies in terms of planning, development, and performance of tourist
attractions, extending the hospitality for tourist from the exchange values that
community achieve from tourism and avoiding ruins in socio-cultural perspective (Ap,
1992).
The rural tourism development in China counts on the Chinese government’s policy.
The policy of rural tourism promotion of Chinese government is “Three Nong” policy
with the concentration on agriculture, farmer and rural area. Since the 1979s, Chinese
government’s policy had come loose and gave farmers more freedom in terms of their
agricultural production and other businesses in tourism faculty. Farmers are able to earn
more money from tourists based on providing a diversity of tourism services. They
could run their businesses focusing on tourists’ attractions (Gao et al, 2008).
In the late of eighteen century, the industrialization and urbanization rose faster and led
to the growth in rural tourism because people living in urban areas desire to be back
with the countryside for vacations, especially in the southern and northern Europe. In
general, the diversity of tourism type also brings to the growth of rural entertainment
forms in the 1950s. Thanks to the development of economy, the permanent income is
improved and people have more free time therefore, this is one of the reasons leading to
the increase in rural tourism. The development of rural area is related to other elements
such as the rise of environmental concerns and the desire of being in nature to keep
balance between the stressful lives in urban area and relax times in rural area. (Page and
Connell, 2006).
China’s economy is booming and the varieties of businesses are flourishing leading to
the significant improvement of people’s living standard. As a matter of fact, urban
residents are able to spend time in rural area for relaxing in the holiday. The policy “a
two-day weekend and a three-week Golden holiday” of Chinese government facilitate
for the development of rural tourism due to inhabitants in urban areas have more
possibilities to be in the countryside (Gao et al, 2008).
There are some different traditional perspectives on tourism in rural areas with different
countries, such as in southern Europe traditional perspective is concerned about a cheap
selection to resort vacations. For example, in Portugal people go to rural area for staying
on farms with the farming family meanwhile Germany and Austria, rural tourism is
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often related to wealthier. The diversity of rural tourism products has been developed
and promoted on wider scope in the 1990s (Page and Connell, 2006).
The rural tourism development in China is related to farming activities and farmers are
the main investors and operators. The significantly outstanding tourism product in the
growth of rural tourism in China is the Happy Farmer’s Home (HPH) and this
production is well-known and provided for the huge tourism market in the 1990s (Shao,
2007a). The HPH’s prominent character is farmers as owners and operators in tourism
businesses. They serve the leisure and holiday tourism activities. From this model, some
other tourism products are formulated such as Happy Orchid of Plum, Happy
Fishermen’s Home, so on. These tourism products are relatively appropriate for
farmers’ rural tourism businesses due to requirement of less investment in terms of
capital and with small scale (Gao et al, 2008).
Sub Conclusion
In Europe, the growth of rural tourism is based on many factors such as active sports
participation, new sport for example snow sports, mountain biking, climbing, so on or
new technology. Other factors such as health promotion, policy promotion, concerns in
the environment and increased marketing of activities are combined in order explaining
for the rural tourism development (Page and Connell 2006). However, the case in
China, the main root of rural tourism development is economic factor as described
above, thus the growth of rural tourism will have the different characters with the rural
tourism development in Europe or other countries. This enabled to logical sequence for
the impacts of tourism on socio-cultural perspective in rural area due to Chinese
government would be more concerned about economic than socio-cultural perspective.
The negative impact of tourism on socio-culture could lead to change the authenticity,
mainly objective authenticity that is potential for developing tourism in rural area. We
will identify the concept of authenticity and different perspectives in the next part.
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5. AUTHENTICITY
In this part we mention different aspects of authenticity at the beginning, then based on
the different types of authentic experiences from objective authenticity, constructive
authenticity and existential authenticity we go through more detail description to each
perspective. After all we make a brief conclusion related to the problem formulation for
the project. By looking up in this chapter, it could help us to define the best way
connection to social exchange theory from domestic tourists’ demand and local
production which could offer without changing the local cultural.
5.1. Different aspects of authenticity
The concept of authenticity of tourist motivations and tourists’ experience has been
introduced two decades before (Wang, 1999). Cohen (1988) stated that authenticity is
closely connected to the impact of modernity upon the unity of social existence
(1988:103). In fact, museum is the birth place for the word “authenticity” Trilling in
Cohen (1988: 104) where persons expert in such matters test whether objects of art
[and by extension, ethnographic objects] are what they appear to be or are claimed to
be, and therefore…worth the admiration they are being given. Today, authenticity can
be used to define some kinds of tourism such as ethnic, history and culture tourism
(Wang, 1999).
Based on Kim and Jamal (2006), authenticity has played an important role in
understanding tourist motivation and experience. Authenticity is an unclear definition
from different situations and different person’s view (Lindholm, 2008 and Wang, 1999).
It is as a consequence of reflection of tourists’ own beliefs, expectations; preferences,
stereotyped images, and consciousness onto toured others (Wang, 1999).
Wang (1999) stated that many tourists’ motivations or experience cannot be defined in
terms of the regular concept of authenticity such as: fishing, hunting, visiting friends,
sport and so on. Authenticity is closely related to the views of the individual within a
society; it is a popular cultural construct in western world (Sedmak and Mihalic, 2008).
Lindholm (2008) defined that personal expectation for authenticity sometime will create
uncertain issues of risk, conversely will make people grief and desire. For instance, it
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could be interesting for tourists if they are very close to a real crocodile instead of a
spurious. But Cohen (1988) pointed out that the desire for different, novel stimulus and
strangeness are the most important motive of tourism who would like to experience
authentic.
5.2. Authentic experience
Wang (1999) pointed out that the issue of authenticity in tourism can be divided into
two different aspects: tourist experience (authentic experience) and toured objects.
Tourist experience involves three types of authenticity: objective authenticity,
constructive authenticity and existential authenticity.
An authentic experience is one in which individuals feel themselves to be in touch both
with a real world and with their real selves (Handle and Saxton in Wang, 1999:351).
Halewood and Hannam (2001) stated that authenticity has been used as a marketing
strategy for host to get some benefits from it. For instance, tourists are interested in
some local product such as craft products or souvenirs; but during the produce process
the product lost the original meaning itself or even inauthentic link to the original
culture.
5.2.1. Objective authenticity
Objective authenticity refers to the authenticity of originals (Wang, 1999). Based on
MacCannell’s a point of view of objective authenticity argued that certain toured
objects, such as nature, are in a strict sense irrelevant to the sense of authenticity (Wang,
1999). Kim and Jamal (2007) mentioned that a quest for “originals” or for the “truths”
is equally as a quest for “objective authenticity”. And the best way to define objective
authenticity will be good to base on the original situation without any modern life (Kim
and Jamal, 2007).
Cohen (1988) argued that the product should not be produced “specifically for the
market” if the product want to be accepted as authentic and normally reproduction
product cannot give the real authentic to visitors. The deeper argumentation for that is
the machine…could make only inauthentic things, dead thing… (Cohen, 1988:105).
Objective authenticity is always link to the attribute of the products or the projected
attribute of the product, therefore, it rely on the tourism product itself (Wang, 1999).
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Wang (1999) also stated that on the other hand, objective authenticity are created by
certain knowledge, it is easy for visitors to adapt because it is truth and original not
created by different minds from someone else.
5.2.2. Constructive authenticity
Constructive authenticity is totally different from objective authenticity, tourism
attractions are not the original product, it is built by variety reasons such as different
point of view from host and guest, beliefs, or powers (Wang, 1999). Constructive
authenticity may difficult accept by different visitors, due to the multiple and different
meaning of what visitors saw by different perspective (Wang, 1999). For instance, the
temple which was building in China might not be used for foreign tourists to visit and
experience the authenticity as domestic tourists did because the domestic tourists are
always have deeply image about how the Chinese culture is. This might be difficult for
the foreign tourists to see in their point of understanding of Chinese culture.
5.2.3. Existential Authenticity
Existential authenticity is not linked to the object of the tour because it directly refers to
tourists’ activities (Wang, 1999). It refers to a potential existential state of Being that is
to be activated by tourist activities (Wang, 1999:352). As Steiner and Reisinger (2006)
argued that existential authenticity can help the tourism planning and marketing
research based on tourist’ willing of existential authenticity. They are the “experiential
tourists” who would deeply concern about the authentic experience with their own
feeling of authenticity.
Existential authenticity can explain the variety of experience that objective authentic
cannot (Wang, 1999). Existential authenticity brings more experience to visitors, they
decide what could be authentic or not, they will enjoy and feel the authentic experience
from different activities, therefore visitors have free feeling of existential authenticity
(Wang, 1999). Wang (2009) described that some of the traditional culture festival such
as Water-Sprinkling Festival in Xishuang Banna has been used by Dai Minority’s
citizens to attract tourists as a commercial program and earn money. In fact, the WaterSprinkling Festival holds only once a year, local citizens celebrate it as a New Year
Festival in China. It is the way to bless with each other and also to cherish the memory
of local hero Li Liang (Wang, 2009). With the foreign tourists they are very enjoy the
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event and thought that would be the experience of existential authenticity even that
means not existential authenticity for locals.
Sub-conclusion
Through the above description of objective, constructive and existential authenticity, it
obviously shows that the objective authenticity is focusing on the “original” and “truth”.
In particular, constructive authenticity and existential authenticity are also two kinds of
experience of authenticity, but more rely on the tourists feeling and experience.
Concerning about the constructive authenticity, one hand, if the locals are building
something new with their own culture and custom then maybe it might not easily
accepted by tourist. On the other hand, constructive authenticity is not the original
product and the product was built based on the different view, the extra value maybe
added on the product makes it with overstate meaning.
The local culture and heritage might be changed such as the traditional event in
Xishuang Banna which we have mentioned above, that means locals just break their
own traditional culture to meet and satisfy tourists’ demand. The local product turns to
commercialization. Domestic tourists visit rural area is because the nature resource and
traditional culture and so on, it not because the man-made sightseeing and
commercialization products, because the domestic tourists have the basic knowledge
about the culture in China. They know what is truth and false. With the objective
authenticity tourists could experience the real original as they wanted, and the local
culture can be good protected without any changing and breaking.
5.3. The connection among objective authenticity, social exchange
and tourism
The connection among objective authenticity, social exchange and rural tourism will be
described in this part. The concept of objective authenticity is denoted as original
tourism product, social exchange is considered through social interaction between hosts
and tourists based on rural tourism activities.
In our project, we focus on objective authenticity as an important factor to preserve
cultural values, traditions, natural landscapes because the main target group and
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potential tourists for Chinese tourism market is domestic tourists. Chinese domestic
tourists are a mass tourism market for developing rural tourism (Gao et al, 2009).
Domestic tourists desire to return to the countryside and they are the potential tourist as
well as they account for majority of tourists, “there are at least 20 times as many
Chinese as there are international visitors” (Gormsen and Erdmann, 1990:129).
In order to facilitate to understanding the connection among objective authenticity,
social exchange and tourism, we give an example and analyze the connection through a
real example in Wang’s research (2007).
“That would make a nice picture!” said Ann to her Chinese friend, taking out her
camera for a snapshot. In the direction Ann was looking, her friend saw two old Naxi
women in their traditional clothes chatting in front of a typical house. “Old town, old
house and old Naxi. How beautiful…” Ann had not finished speaking when the two old
women approached, say something in the Naxi language and gesturing. “What do they
want?” Ann asked. “Money for the picture” her friend said, felling somewhat
embarrassed. Ann asked after she gave money for them “But aren’t they real Naxi”
(2007:789).
Lijiang is one of the most phenomenon attractions in China and famous with authentic
Naxi culture, therefore, it attracts many tourists. That is not surprising when tourists
always bring out the common question if local culture is real or just tourism
commercialization products because tourists desire to experience the authentic culture
that they are introduced before their tours. In this example, Ann had some doubts,
because these women asked Ann for money, and she felt if Naxi women accepted her
requirements, perhaps just because of her money and that is not probably Naxi authentic
culture (Wang, 2007).
Lijiang is well-known with natural landscape such as the Jade-Dragon Snow Mountain,
the Bench of Yangzi River, and the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Lijiang becomes one the most
popular attractions since 1986 when the State Council concentrate on designing the Old
Town that is considered as “national treasure”. In order to both improve for the living
standard of local people and preserve the old values in Lijiang, the local government
suggest the new type of tourism homestay guesthouse in Lijiang Old Town. Homestay
guesthouse is like a solution to preserve the cultural authenticity of the Naxi and
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provide for tourists’ authentic experiences. The homestay guesthouse is presented the
“ancient”, “authentic” or “unique” living Naxi culture (Ibid, 2007).
According to the statistic in Wang (2007), about 45% percent of tourist make a decision
to stay in homestay guesthouse due to they want to experience “authentic” Naxi cultural
lifestyle. Staying in homestay guesthouse provides opportunities for the social exchange
process between hosts and tourists occurring. Social interaction between hosts and
tourists will take place through communication process and the hosts’ responses and
meets for tourists. Hosts have to modify somewhat in terms of facility in homestay
guesthouse that differ with hosts’ daily lives. Tourists require something that they
consider as basic needs such as flush toilets, bathtubs, TV sets. In addition, hosts have
to change some the authentic Naxi construction in the house, for example open new big
windows in the guestroom that is not normal in Naxi traditional construction. These
physical changes create break “authentic” somehow for Naxi traditional houses. Social
interactions between hosts and tourists not only impact on the physical aspect but also
influent to lifestyle of Naxi people: their routine activities, cooking, and native language
due to the hosts often meet tourists’ demand. This process leads to “authentic Naxi
cultural home” turn on to initiative home for the tourist (Ibid, 2007).
Social exchange is indicated through the compromising process of between hosts’ meets
and tourists’ requirement, as a consequence of transforming from “authentic Naxi
home” to “authentic experience” that actually make tourists have feeling that they are
staying at their home. At the beginning of this process, tourists do not feel changes so
much; they only feel more comfortable like stay at their home. Nevertheless, this
authenticity gradually transformed to staged authenticity due to tourists have feeling
they have an authentic experience from the activities, but in fact it was judged as
inauthentic. If the tourists realized the changes of the re-construction from the
traditional house by hosts, they would dissatisfy in the “inauthentic Naxi homestay”
because tourists expect to experience “authentic Naxi home and culture” (Ibid, 2007).
Based on the example mentioned above with authentic Naxi cultural lifestyle, Wang
(2007) indicated that about 64% tourists were very satisfied with Naxi Homestays
because most of them are domestic tourists and they desire to experience with authentic
tourism. Tourists and hosts are from the same country, therefore social interactions take
place between hosts and tourists, tourists can realize that Naxi lifestyle is real or not
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real. This could bring more domestic tourists if they gained real authentic tourism
because tourists achieved what they desire.
The connection among objective authenticity, social exchange and rural tourism helps
to enlighten the process of the development of rural tourism and is able to envisage the
future prosperity of rural tourism industry. Nevertheless, the future prosperity of rural
tourism industry in China depends on some involved actors such as the Chinese
government’s role and local people the main actors in tourism activities. We will
examine the role of Chinese government based on Chinese policies in promoting in
rural tourism development on the next chapter.
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6. ANALYSIS
6.1. Rural tourism in China
Rural tourism is a new type of tourism market in China today; it relies on its nature
resources and rural culture in the area (Zhao, 2007). Based on the Chinese government
planning (2009), rural tourism becomes a tool for development of economic and socioculture in rural area. Economic goals tend to be as an important factor to develop rural
tourism.
Chinese government planning (2009) reminded that rural tourism received more than
385 million tourists in 2008 and rural tourism income reached 57.3 billion RMB.
Farmers direct employed around 4.95 million, indirect employment and seasonal
employment were 18.4 million. Rural tourism development has gotten a huge success in
the past.
Based on Wang (2007) the major strengths for developing rural tourism could be
divided in to three parts. Firstly, there are rich resources in rural area both natural and
man-made tourism resource. Therefore, the local traditional culture and vernacular
heritage need to protect well due to the purpose of tourism development (Ying and
Zhou, 2007). Secondly, the cultures in rural area in China are special and unique.
Thirdly, environment quality in rural area is higher than urban. Close to nature, relax,
improving family happiness and so on are the main motivation for tourists travel to rural
area in China (Yu, 2004). Traditional culture atmosphere and great attraction are the
advantages in rural area that the urban tourism and commercial tourism cannot offer to
tourists. On the other hand due to the high quality of water, sound and so on much better
than urban area, more and more domestic tourists start traveling to rural area. Because
those people who are living in cities are weary of flow of cars and the deterioration of
environment (Shen et al, 2007:69).
Government plays an important role to develop tourism market in China; it has the right
to control the tourism market. According to Wang (2007:42), “development of rural
tourism is highly affected by the government management”.
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6.2. Socio-cultural impacts in rural tourism in China
The growth of rural tourism in China just started since the early 1980s, however the
impacts of tourism in rural tourism somehow could estimate in some perspective (e.g.
economy) and another one could not evaluate. The impacts of tourism in terms of socioculture can be classified into two types, qualitative and quantitative. On the one hand,
qualitative impacts (e.g. the impacts on culture, the traditional values) are difficult to
measure. On the other hand, quantitative impact can be measured (e.g. crime) (Gartner,
1996). The impacts include two sides, positive and negative side in terms of many
aspects.
Based on the inherence of natural sites, the diversity of cultural values, traditional and
custom factor, rural tourism in China has huge opportunities to develop rural tourism
and bring benefits nevertheless, development of rural tourism can change these values
mentioned above and somehow can ruin them, this might lead to the dilemma for China
that can be understandable in metaphor: “to kill the hen for the egg” (Gao, et al,
2009:448).
6.2.1. Socio-cultural benefits
According to the National Bureau of Statistic of China (NBSC), population in rural
areas account for 56.1% of the country’s total population, thus rural tourism
development is always one of the most concerns of Chinese government.
The rural tourism development brings not only economic benefits but also socio-cultural
benefits such as new initiative, innovations, and philosophies. Farmers gain the
diversity of initiative on the value of tourism resources. From economic benefits, they
are able to realize the importance of the landscape, ecological system, historical
heritage, ethnic architecture, fold music and dance, festivals and traditional
craftsmanship in the growth of rural tourism and these become the best motivation for
local people to preserve and protect some cultural values almost disappearing (Shao,
2007a). Some heritage areas and cultures in China have been preserved and protected
well thank to the rural tourism development for example ethnic household architecture
in the border areas linking Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, Dongba scriptures of Naxi
people in Yunnan, the Grand Singing Ceremony of Dong people in Guizhou, Jin
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merchant houses in Shanxi, and ancient streets in water towns along the Yangtze River
(Shao, 2007a).
Another socio-cultural benefits from rural tourism development is education particular
in tourism service and “skills training covering Mandarin” (Shao, 2007b)., the skill
communication with tourists and improved in foreign language, improved knowledge in
tourism areas and facilitate integration with tourism development in international
environment, as well as skills of assessment in high technology such as computer skills.
Farmers are one of the main actors in tourism activities in rural areas, thus they are able
to improve their ability and has enabled to adapt to the development in the modern
nowadays with changes happening every day. This helps them to learn and have
appropriate reaction in new situations, or they can meet “the rules and principles of the
country’s transitional market economy system”(Shao, 2007b).
6.2.2. Socio-cultural impacts
As mentioned above that the qualitative impacts are not easily measured and parlicular
in China, this issue is currently pretty sensitive thus, negative socio-cultural impacts are
not measured exactly and sufficiently. Based on the current facts of rural tourism in
China, there are a number of common impacts defined.
The impact on socio-culture is related to the concept of authenticity. In several rural
areas, rural tourism products are no longer the diversity and origin; they express a high
level of homogeneity (Tian, 2008). That is understandable in some identified political
geographic area, rural tourisms provide the same tourism product type (e.g. happy
farmer’s home mentioned in rural tourism development part, ancient style houses,
farms). As a consequence, the objective authenticity would gradually disappear and
another result, farmers in the same geographic area, the main actors in rural tourism and
investor as well as operators has to face with the high competition and this lead to
reduction on the development of sustainability in rural areas (Gao et al, 2009).
The rural cultural values play a vital and essential role in the development of rural
tourism (Sharpley and Robert, 2004); nevertheless one of the tendencies in the
development of rural tourism in China is transforming away the rural values.
Modifications of the construction fashion styles in rural is trends to urban construction
style and actors operating in rural tourism have tendencies to apply and upgrade their
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tourism product design, infrastructure, facilities similar to urban design (Gao et al,
2009).
These trends are deviated not only in physical fashion style but also in the lifestyle
somehow similar to the Lijiang example (mentioned in the connection among objective
authenticity, social exchange and tourism part). Local people’s tradition and cultures
deviate while they compromise with tourists’ requirements. In order to meet the
requirements of mass tourism market and tourists, rural tourism products only offer
simply tourism products without diversity such as with tourists’ overnight can
experience in farmer’s homes, farmland, harvesting and experiencing farmer’s festivals
(Ibid, 2009).
Rural tourism development is adherence to construction that always brings ecological
and environmental issues and it is not possible to predict the consequence of
development process in rural areas due to the lack of researching project before
developing and a number of professional planning and development expertise (Zhou et
al, 2008). The combination between rural community participation and actors in tourism
activities leads to the lack of consensus and no cooperation, the dissatisfaction of
interest among stakeholders, and even social chaos (Liu, 2008).
Rural tourism development brings more educational benefits for tourists than for local
people although host society might learn from different perspective from tourists and
these lessons are able to take place when hosts and tourists meet as equals (Gartner,
1996). The actors are involved with tourism activities such as wait staff meet
subservient roles, the hosts’ achievement through social exchange in this case is less
because hosts can learn only in terms of the service skills require that are necessary to
be acted in the tourism area (Ibid, 1996).
6.3. Overview of Chinese government planning for rural tourism
development (2009-2015)
6.3.1. Introduction
Rural tourism is an important component of China’s tourism market; rural tourism
development has brought a new impetus for the economic growth in tourism market in
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China. With the rapid growth rate and big potential market, therefore, rural tourism
development has been made for. Based on the government planning, the significant
meaning for rural tourism development is: 1) to increase the employment opportunities
for local farmers; 2) to increase the income of local farmers through the development of
tourism; 3) to satisfy with different tourist’s demand for seeking for cultural
consumption. On the other hand, rural tourism development will also help to increase
the local farmers’ attitude of the protection for the tourism source in the local area.
6.3.2. Basic principles of rural tourism development
Rural tourism development should base on the principles of: firstly, rural tourism
development should base on the agricultural, enterprises could participate in the rural
tourism development but need always to concern with the benefits for the local farmers.
Secondly, rural tourism development should avoid the overexploitation and overuse.
Thirdly, according to the status of development, rural tourism product should be
provided with local characteristic based on the different market needs. Finally, rural
tourism development should connect to urban tourists demand and encourage tourists
from urban to rural and from rural to urban.
6.3.3. Development orientation and goal
Rural tourism development orientation is going to make rural area becoming the
significant tourism destination and the important placing for exporting tourists. The goal
for rural tourism development is turning the rural tourism development as a leading
force of the construction of new rural area and promotes the development of the rural
industry, in order to increase the local’s income for building social harmony and
stability in rural area. The government is aimed to create 1000 tourist town in rural area
with convenient transportation, quality service with all kinds of functions, strong
attraction and so on as their working goal.
6.3.4. The main task for rural tourism development
The planning for developing rural tourism is: to satisfy tourists for both domestic and
oversea and even for domestic elder people by creating different types of tourism
products what are new and civilization. Building tourism belt around urban area is one
of the 4 different types of gathering areas. Government is going to enhance and reconstruct the local facilities such as car parking, shopping mall, service center and so
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on. Due to the supporting from Chinese government, tourism sector should help to
develop a specific training plan for locals to enhance the service quality and profession
skills in tourism. The main principal should more focusing on management,
development and sales promotion in order to get more tourists. Chinese government will
encourage and rewards those who have a relevance education background with tourism
are going to rural tourism and help for the rural tourism development.
6.4. Analysis of Chinese government planning for rural tourism
development
Chinese government planning pointed out that the main purports to develop rural
tourism are to increase farmers’ income, create more job opportunities and satisfy
different tourists’ demand. To achieve the purports firstly, the government is planning
to build hotel, car parking, and shopping center in rural area and so on; secondly, the
government is going to train local people with high service quality and service skills in
order to satisfy tourists’ needs.
Yu and Lew (1995) stated that domestic tourism market has a big potential in tourism
development in China. China has a big tourism market with domestic tourists, and
domestic tourists could be divided into urban tourists and rural tourists. Urban tourists
have higher tourism activity than rural tourists (Wang and Lu, 2008). Sightseeing and
relax are the main purpose for domestic tourists, and the major attractions are some
nature resources and culture heritages for domestic tourists (Yu and Lew, 1995). In
addition the rural culture, landscapes, and the more pure of environment in rural area
than other region is one of the important reason to attract visitors because in the modern
time, people live mainly in urban cities and they have stress, pressures from work,
society, and so on thus they want to escape from cities to rural to relax and recover
energy and live in pure natural environment (Zhao, 2007).
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(Table of domestic tourists from 1996-2007: Wang and Lu, 2009)
Domestic tourists were increasing year by year from 639 million people in 1996 to 1610
million people in 2007 (China tour, 2009). That means domestic tourists are traveling
more than before, due to the high income and flexible holiday time and around 70%
domestic tourists were choosing their tourism destination in rural area (Chen, 2006). Yu
and Lew (1995:129) pointed out that urban tourists would like travel to rural area
because they want go back to nature and visit areas with attractive nature resources and
bucolic rural scenes (Shen et al, 2007) that the urban tourism and the commercial
tourism could not offer to tourists (Ibid, 2007). Especially for urban tourists, they are
living in cities with so many traffic jams, pollution, complex relations and the
deterioration of environment (Ibid, 2007). On the other side, accessible rural area is
easy to achieve for individually travelling group, because many domestic tourists do not
have enough time or money for long time tour.
Based on the overview of Chinese government planning, we realize that the
development of rural tourism is due to the economic issue on poverty alleviation, thus
Chinese government more concentrates on the developing method for gaining economic
benefits rather than other perspective such as concern about preserving socio-cultural
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perspective. Therefore, it is possible to lead to the lack of Chinese’s consideration and
prediction of the consequences of developing tourism process in rural area. Otherwise,
tourism planning tries to attract to tourists by building hotels, car parking, and shopping
center, so on. The rural environment might be changed due to the tourism planning.
Hotel, car parking and shopping center are the mostly common things appear in the
cities and this will bring out several our assumptions.
Building hotels, shopping centers, and car parking and so on are deviate the rural
construction fashion style and all those facilities may not fit with the nature
environment in rural area. The natural sites and rural constructions style are extremely
important factors for developing rural tourism and tourists were attracting to rural area.
Investment on the hospitality will bring some risks for local people, for example,
owners of these constructions could be not local people and the benefits of developing
rural tourism could not belong to them, meanwhile they are significantly influenced by
the development of rural tourism. Furthermore, farmers can be attracted by higher
salary to work in the hotels or shopping centers, thus they can stop working in their
farms, and they sell property and work in the new area. In fact, tourism is an unstable
activity in the market; it also depends on high season and low season. And farmers may
also lose their jobs during the low season with fewer tourists. As a result of
inappropriate policies, rural landscape is changeable, typical rural tourism products
could disappear and replacing by urban tourism products.
When we are concerning about the objective authenticity, Cohen (1988) argued that the
product should not be produced “specifically for the market” if the product want to be
accepted as authentic and normally reproduction product cannot give the real authentic
to visitors. In fact, with more and more modern facilities will also impact on the local
farmer’s daily life and suddenly make rural area turning to urbanization. Therefore,
tourism planning should avoid building everything new within the rural area; instead,
invests on the local building.
Local farmers are the host in the rural area; they know the culture much better than the
others. According to Yu and Lew (1995), training and education can help to enhance the
quality of skills and service. On the other hand, communication and education should
also spread the information to local populations in order to avoid or reduce the negative
impact of tourism culturally, socially and so on. That means education is not the way to
increase the service skills but also for improve the knowledge about locals. Most of
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local farmers are lacking the awareness of long-term development and awareness of
protection. Due to the weakness of professional service skills are lacking, therefore, the
service quality in rural lack of standardization and the local environment was changed
by locals.
Based on the tourism planning (2009-2015), government is planning to training local
people with high service quality and professional skills. With the high service quality,
tourists might more satisfaction than before and on the other hand, it could also help
local farmers to contact with tourists. But the problem is locals may very easy
influenced by tourists and tourists can also very easy to change the local culture and
daily life. Therefore, to train locals with basic awareness of protection and development
are also necessary and possible.
The reasons to train local farmers with the awareness are: firstly, local farmers should
aware that tourism is only one of the tools to support for the better life; they cannot
totally rely on the tourism development, tourism is not the main purpose of their life
otherwise they will give up the original work on the farm. Secondly, nature resources
are the main resources to support their life from now on, without it tourists are not
coming anymore and it also becomes difficult for local farmers to survive in the future.
Therefore, to enhance local famer’s attitude of protection is more important than
increasing the professional skills of service. Local farmers can influence tourists
through their attitude and behavior, they could be against tourists with bad issues such
as new pollution that tourists are carrying with them and throwing out to the rural area.
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7. CONCLUSION
After making an analysis in connection to the defined problem statement, it is possible
to make a conclusion. The development of high technology lead to creating new types
of transportation and reducing the geographic distance between places and countries,
this can facilitate people to travel more often than before. As a consequence, tourism
has become one of the industries with strongest development element and largest scale
in globe economy, and tourism is turning to become the main industry to develop the
economy in China. The reason local people in China would like travel to rural area is
because the relaxing situation and creating family happiness close to nature. Rural
tourism is still a new market with its undoubted culture heritage and nature resources in
both remote rural area and accessible rural area in China.
The history of rural tourism development in the world has been over 100 years, however
the growth of rural tourism in China just started since the late 1980s due to the Chinese
government planning desire to eliminate poverty in rural areas. In addition, China has
achieved economic development and improved the living standards for people in recent
decades; as a result, it brings more tourism consumption from domestic tourists
particularly with Chinese inhabitants who are living in urban area.
The social exchange theory pointed out that the interaction between individual and
organization from both reward and cost, and norm and values can be defined. Based on
the theory we can find out the connection among social exchange theory, objective
authenticity and tourism that help us to answer the first question in our project: what the
impacts of tourism on socio-culture in rural area when Chinese government promotes
rural tourism.
Object authenticity is the only authentic experience we decided to use in our project,
due to the local demand and long term developing strategy. Hence, the developing
planning should more concerning about the social-cultural impact than only thinking
about the economic, because the nature resources are not renewable energy sources.
Therefore, as the conclusion we found the government planning tends to invest in rural
area will bring negative socio-cultural impact concerning about a long time strategy.
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According to the rural tourism development planning, the purpose to develop rural
tourism in China is more concerning about the economic issues, thus it leading to some
outcomes and one of the most serious outcomes is the impacts of tourism on sociocultural perspective in rural area. Socio-cultural impact has both negative and positive
sides. In this case, we defined that through the rural tourism development it can help
local farmers to find more job opportunity and earn more money than before to support
their life, on the other hand, the skills training can help local farmers to improve their
knowledge in tourism area, service skills and the communication skills with tourists. Of
course, everything has the opposite side. More job opportunities, more income and more
benefits that mean tourists are also increasing more and more. The famous scenic spots
were overloaded with tourists and create intangible damage for some spots with a long
history, because the sights received more tourists than they were planned for. Also the
tourists leave a mass of trash after tourists’ visiting even tourists do not respect the local
culture and resources; some of nature resources was broken by tourists and cannot
restoration afterward.
Looking at the interaction between tourists and locals, and government and locals we
found that the tourists are the most beneficiaries from rural tourism development.
Therefore, the more negative impact will bring from tourists to change the sociocultural in rural area. Because domestic tourists are the mainly target group travel to
rural area, due to the different level of economy and social background, they prefer to
see and experience the different that urban cannot offer and satisfy to them. And the
locals, they are relying on the nature resources, landscape and agriculture to support
their life, but they do not have enough money go travel as urban citizens. Tourists want
getting specific experience from local farmers and local farmers start thinking get
money from tourists. With the lack of knowledge for the local protection, local farmers
do not mind what tourists did in the area, at least they can get money. And at the same
time locals offer the perfect product what tourists wanted. Therefore, the local culture
and resources have been broken not only by tourists but also by local farmers.
Analyzing Chinese government planning helps us to enlighten the second question how
government avoid changing socio-culture in rural area when they develop tourism in
rural area and we bring out some our opinions and discussions about government
planning. Chinese government has the right power to control the tourism development
in rural area. As we mentioned before, economic issue are the main purpose to develop
rural tourism in China and the way to increase economic is to bring more tourists
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coming to the rural area and spending money there. In order to meet tourists’ needs, the
development planning plans to build new infrastructure such as hotels, car parking, and
shopping center and so on. In some case, new infrastructure can meet tourists’ need and
tourists they are used the way they have at home. For locals, they do not mind even they
start learn something new from the new facilities at least they can earn. But the nature
source can be changed by using this way to develop rural tourism. Especially for those
who concerning about the authentic rural tourism experience.
In order to avoid the problems based on our analysis, it obvious shows that the
government should not only concern to train the service skills to local famers, to learn
how to protect their culture is more important than just know how to satisfy with
tourists. Also if we are concerning about the real authentic experience in rural area,
hotels, shopping centers and car parking are not suit with the nature environment in
rural area. The government could invest the money on the local farmers’ house instead
of building something new. Otherwise, the new urban area gonna be built in rural area.
There is a need for further research with respect to socio-cultural impact in rural tourism
development. It could be better by using primary data instead of secondary data. This
project is more theoretical study, and most of authors may define the theory based on
western world. However rural tourism is still a new tourism market in China therefore
there is the need to have a more comprehensive understanding of socio-cultural impact
with different aspects in different geographical areas.
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9. APPENDIX
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