A Study on the Coordinative Green Development of Tourist Experience and Commercialization of Tourism at Cultural Heritage Sites

Chengcai Tang, Qianqian Zheng and Pin Ng
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Chengcai Tang: School of Tourism Sciences, Beijing International Studies University, Beijing 100024, China
Qianqian Zheng: School of Tourism Sciences, Beijing International Studies University, Beijing 100024, China
Pin Ng: W. A. Franke College of Business, Norther Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 17, 1-19

Abstract: Tourism at China’s cultural heritage sites has developed rapidly in recent years. These sites have encountered many challenging problems such as poor tourist experience, over-commercialization, and loss of cultural authenticity. This study took the coordinative green development of tourist experience and commercialization of tourism (CGDTECT) at cultural heritage sites as the research objective, using two UNESCO World Heritage Sites—the Ancient City of Pingyao and West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou—and the Confucius Temple in the historic district of Nanjing as case studies. As such, we attempted to construct an indicator system for CGDTECT at cultural heritage sites. We adopted a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method and importance-performance analysis (IPA) method to analyze the importance and performance of CGDTECT from a tourist’s perspective. Our findings show that tourists thought the coordinative green development and experience at the three cultural heritage sites were more important; they were basically satisfied with CGDTECT at the three case studies, so a continuous promotion strategy could be taken. The findings of this study can provide scientific theoretical guidance and practical reference for CGDTECT at cultural heritage sites, and contribute to the scientific protection of cultural heritage sites and the sustainable development of tourism.

Keywords: cultural heritage sites; tourist experience; commercialization of tourism; coordinative green development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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