The Impact of Rural Tourism on Rural Culture Evidence from China

Yanjun Wang, Yanjun Chen, Wang Zhang, I-Chen Chao and Hang Li ()
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Yanjun Wang: School of Applied Economics, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 102445, China
Yanjun Chen: School of Economics and Management, Shanxi Normal University, Taiyuan 030000, China
Wang Zhang: College of Logistics and E-Commerce, Zhejiang Wanli University, Ningbo 315100, China
I-Chen Chao: Department of Applied Clinical and Educational Sciences, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47809, USA
Hang Li: Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC V2N 4Z9, Canada

Agriculture, 2024, vol. 14, issue 12, 1-19

Abstract: The development of rural tourism plays an important role in promoting rural culture. By integrating 3833 household questionnaires from the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS) database with remote sensing data, we constructed an evaluation system to measure the level of rural culture. Then, we analyzed the impacts of rural tourism on rural culture from macro and micro perspectives. Our research results show the following: (1) Villages with developed rural tourism show a 85.9% increase in rural culture compared to those without tourism; (2) mechanism tests show that rural tourism promotes the rural culture by improving households’ risk-sharing behavior, human resources, and self-identification, leading to increases of 3.4%, 55% and 10.9%, respectively; (3) with micro-level (fieldwork survey) and macro-level analysis (remote sensing), we analyzed the various impacts of rural tourism on rural culture under different income levels, demographic structures, geographical locations and topographical conditions. The results show that at the micro level, the promotion effect of rural tourism on rural culture increases by 2.214% and 1.679% with the increase in per capita income and the proportion of women, respectively. For geographical location, macro-level data suggest that rural tourism in the east of China increases the rural culture by 3.416%. Moreover, in plain areas, both micro- and macro-level analysis indicated that rural tourism promotes rural culture by 2.323% and 4.607%, respectively. This is the first time rural culture has been evaluated on a large scale with two cross-validated approaches.

Keywords: rural tourism; rural culture; questionnaire; remote sensing; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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