Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Rural perception on tourists’ willingness to revisit in rural tourism: a study of Ma Wei Yi folk culture village, Shaanxi Province, China

A influência da percepção rural na vontade dos turistas de revisitar localidades rurais: um estudo da aldeia folclórica de Ma Wei Yi, Província de Shaanxi, China

ABSTRACT:

The development of rural tourism destinations in China is confronting multiple issues, including blind expansion and a repetitive developmental model, causing the sector to enter a vicious competition cycle. The perception among tourists of rural tourism destinations, and their willingness to revisit places will provide insights for service providers that will enable them to form better strategies to stand out in the fiercely competitive market. Understanding tourist perception will enable providers to contribute to the construction of rural tourist destinations. Taking Ma Wei Yi Folk Culture Village as a case study, this paper combines the development status of rural tourism in Ma Wei Yi, obtains first-hand data through questionnaire interviews, verifies the research hypothesis, and uses Pearson coefficient to carry out correlation analysis. The paper concluded that tourists’ rural perception has a positive and strong impact on their willingness to revisit, and its factors have different impacts. According to the empirical results, tourist destination providers should pay attention to rural perceptual development in their follow-up development and operation processes. They can effectively attract tourists to visit multiple times, enhance tourist’s sense of enjoyable experience, and achieve sustainable development.

Key words:
rural tourism; rurality; rurality perception

RESUMO:

O desenvolvimento de destinos de turismo rural na China está enfrentando vários problemas, incluindo a expansão cega e um modelo de desenvolvimento repetitivo, fazendo com que o setor entre em um ciclo vicioso de competição. A percepção dos turistas sobre os destinos de turismo rural e sua vontade de revisitar os lugares fornecerão insights para os prestadores de serviços que os capacitarão a formar melhores estratégias para se destacar no mercado acirrado. Compreender a percepção do turista permitirá que os provedores contribuam para a construção de destinos turísticos rurais. Tomando a aldeia de cultura popular Ma Wei Yi como um estudo de caso, este artigo combina o status de desenvolvimento do turismo rural em Ma Wei Yi, obtém dados em primeira mão por meio de entrevistas por questionário, verifica a hipótese de pesquisa e usa o coeficiente de Pearson para realizar a análise de correlação. O artigo conclui que a percepção rural dos turistas tem um impacto positivo e forte na sua vontade de revisitar, e seus fatores têm impactos diferentes. De acordo com os resultados empíricos, os provedores de destinos turísticos devem prestar atenção ao desenvolvimento perceptivo rural em seus processos de desenvolvimento e operação de acompanhamento. Eles podem então efetivamente atrair turistas para visitar várias vezes, aumentar a sensação de experiência agradável do turista e alcançar o desenvolvimento sustentável.

Palavras-chave:
turismo rural; ruralidade; percepção da ruralidade

INTRODUCTION:

With the acceleration of urbanization in China, an increasingly growing number of urban residents live in a fast-paced and high-pressure social environment. The development of industrialization leads to the further deterioration of urban environments, and people’s psychological needs for escaping from towns and returning to nature are constantly increasing. Rural tourism is popular among tourists given their desire for unique natural and simple rural scenery. It has also filled some deficiencies in previous tourism products. Once it appeared, it quickly spread, and its scale and market showed a rapid growth trend.

Rural tourism connects rural characteristics with tourism, which not only helps to increase farmers’ income, narrow the gap between urban and rural areas and promote social stability. More importantly, it helps to improve rural health conditions and enhance rural livelihood. It is undeniable that while vigorously developing rural tourism, there are also some problems. For example, a large number of demolished and rebuilt original buildings meet the increasing number of customers and break the original ecological structure and introduce a large number of foreign products or organisms. Farmers abandoned the original cultivated land and rebuilt it into a tourist destination, which brought a series of far-reaching influences. How to help rural tourism enter the stage of sustainable development is a problem worthy of in-depth discussion.

With the construction of rural tourist destinations across China, all rural tourist destinations are competing for the limited tourist market, which makes the competition among rural tourist destinations even fierce. The importance of tourists’ competition and tourists’ revisiting a destination has become increasingly prominent. Attracting tourists to revisit is not only conducive to maintaining the number of tourists and saving operating costs and more importantly, it can also bring a good reputation and a stable tourist income to a tourist destination.

In recent years, scholars have tried to study the influencing factors of tourists’ willingness to revisit from multiple dimensions, such as the relationship between tourists’ willingness to revisit and destination image, satisfaction and tourism motivation. These studies are mainly applied in the traditional tourism field, and it is difficult to fully explain the tourists’ willingness to revisit in rural tourist destinations in China. On the basis of previous studies, this paper takes rural perception as the research perspectiveso as to provide new ideas for the study of tourists’ willingness to revisit.

1. Literature review

Rurality perception

LANE& BRAMWELL (1994LANE, B. What is Rural Tourism [J]. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 1994 (2): -21. Available from: <Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/09669589409510680 >. Accessed: Sept. 22, 2021.doi: 10.1080/09669589409510680.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0966958940951068...
) believed that countryside tourism is not only the tourism activity based on agriculture, and more importantly it is a muti-dimensional tourism activity as well. Apart from the holiday tourism based on agriculture, it also contains natural tourism, ecological tourism, holiday walking, mountain-climbing and horse-riding with particular interest, adventure, sports, health tourism, hunting, fishing, educational tourism, cultural and traditional tourism as well as certain regional folk activities among others. LIU (2014LIU, X.M. Governance of Rural Tourism Destination from the Perspective of Tragedy of Commons - A Case Study of Guo Liang Village in Henan Province [D]. Shenyang Normal University, 2014. Available from: <Available from: https://d.wanfangdata.com.cn/thesis/D493298 >. Accessed: Jul. 21, 2021.doi: 10.7666/d.D493298.
https://d.wanfangdata.com.cn/thesis/D493...
) thinks that rural tourism refers to a kind of tourism mode with farmers as the main business body, urban residents as the main target market, village folk culture and rural scenery activities as attractions, and tourists’ return to nature and entertainment as the main purpose.

Rural tourism destination serves as a tourist area attracted by the unique production form, life style and pastoral scenery of the countryside and meets the needs of tourists in entertainment, seeking knowledge and returning to nature (DU et al, 1999DU, J. et al. Thoughts on the sustainable development of rural tourism [J]. Journal of Tourism, 1999, (1). Available from: <Available from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFD9899&filename=LYXK901.002&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=2Q7UtNZx_CuCNyT-eMD9gaEGAa-OwszDULmSujGayb8AvqpvFKX4H0NhUInlRixq >. Accessed: Jun. 23, 2019.doi: CNKI:SUN:LYXK.0.1999-01-002.
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail....
). Some scholars believe that rural tourism is a tourism activity integrating viewing, investigation, study, participation, entertainment, shopping and vacation with agricultural cultural landscape, agricultural ecological environment, agricultural production activities and traditional national customs as resources.

To sum up, rural tourism refers to a new kind of tourism business activity that takes rural areas as activity places and provides sightseeing, leisure, experience, fitness, entertainment, shopping and vacation for urban tourists by using the unique natural environment, pastoral landscape, production and management forms, folk culture and customs, farming culture and farmhouses and villages.

The European Union (EU) and the World Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) define rural tourism as follows: rural tourism is a tourism activity that takes place in the countryside, and rurality is the core and unique selling point of the overall marketing of rural tourism.

LANE (1994LANE, B.et al. Rural Tourism and Sustainable Rural Development [M]. UK: Channel View Publications, 1994. ISBN 1873150024. Available from: <Available from: https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/rural-tourism-and-sustainable-rural-development >. Accessed: Jun. 15, 2017.
https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/...
) combines ruralitywith tourism for the first time and interprets the application of rurality in rural tourism from the variables measured by traditional rural geography. BROHMAN (1996BROHMAN, J. New direction in tourism for third world development [J]. Annals of Tourism Research, 1996 (1): 48-70. Available from: <Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-7383(95)00043-7 >. Accessed: Nov. 20, 2020.doi: 10.1016/0160-7383(95)00043-7.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-7383(95)000...
) argued that the key to keeping rural tourism destinations active is that tourism enterprises should be owned by local people with small-scale tourism operations, deep participation of the tourism community and the maintenance of rural culture and the environment. Compared with “Rurality” in rural geography, the “Rurality” in tourism field has paid increased attention to community participation, tourist perception, resource extraction and others. Although, scholars study the rurality of rural tourism from different dimensions, they all recognize the importance of rurality in rural tourism.

In China, HE (2002HE, J. et al. Discussion on the concept of “rural tourism” [J]. Journal of Southwest Normal University: Humanities and Social Sciences Edition, 2002 (5): 125-128. doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-9841.2002.05.026.
https://doi.org/10.3969/j.issn.1673-9841...
) introduced the concept of rural tourism for the first time. He thought that rural tourism must be developed in rural spaces with rural characteristics, and rural tourism should be defined by both. Before the concept of rural nature was put forward, scholars explored the rural characteristics of rural tourism from different angles. ZOU (2006ZOU, T.Q, et al. Dynamic mechanism and government regulation of sustainable development of rural tourism [J]. Journal of Hangzhou Normal University: Social Science Edition, 2006, 28 (2): 64-67. Available from: <Available from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFD2006&filename=HSXX200602011&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=BMiCqAtxoXOiVIHYz3v8gBlgDIfJMdPPW_4SLMzn8yhtZVj-HUSsm9d2S15Fg_kK >. Accessed: Oct. 24, 2020.doi: CNKI:SUN:HSXX.0.2006-02-011.
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail....
) shaped the rural nature of rural tourism from three aspects, namely, differentiated rural theme, local folk customs and architecture, and friendly and simple rural atmosphere. LI (2005LI, K.Y. Rural tourism based on “rural nature” and its social significance [J]. Productivity Research, 2005 (6): 107-108, 169. Available from: <Available from: http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-SCLY200506044.htm >. Accessed: Mar. 20, 2020.doi: CNKI:SUN:SCLY.0.2005-06-044.
http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal...
) believed that the nature of rural tourism is not only a rural regional spatial unit, but also includes rural landscape image and rural cultural image. LIU (2006LIU, D. Q.On rural tourism, agricultural tourism and folk tourism [J]. Journal of Tourism Science, 2006, 21 (13): 12-19. Available from: <Available from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFD2006&filename=LYXK200603007&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=hAe8t262t9eIuuzGhOCnfSAr5EEdpLjtlKG3pKZRau_JA1yzrFCnEDHrow6t3ygT >. Accessed: Sept. 18, 2021.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1002-5006.2006.03.008.
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail....
) thinks that rural customs are the core of rural tourism, which mainly consists of four aspects: rural geographical environment, rural buildings, local tradition and customs, and rural scenery.

At present, the research on rural characteristics is mainly carried out from two perspectives: spatial characteristics and index evaluation. From the perspective of spatial characteristics, it explores the different spatial characteristics, rural spatial patterns and evolution of rural characteristics. Although, it can reflect the spatial change characteristics of rurality to some extent, it cannot explain the internal mechanism of the rurality development and change. In addition, some scholars try to build a rural index model, and determine the level of regional rurality index through relevant data analysis, and then evaluate the rural level of a certain area.

For example, FENG (2007) took Wuyuan, Jiangxi Province as an example, and selected five indicators: regional conditions, tourism resource base, community participation, tourism industry localization and sustainable development to build the evaluation system of rural tourism. WANG (2010) uses five dimensions: regional conditions, rural image, community participation, localization of tourism industry and sustainable development to build a rural index evaluation model of rural tourism. WU (2010WU, L.J, et al. Evaluation of rural non-use value of rural tourism destination-a case study of Beixi Village, Yongchun, Fujian [J]. Advances in Geographical Sciences, 2010, 12: 1606-1612. Available from: <Available from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFD2010&filename=DLKJ201012021&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=aWFUK4J3orWl9fChvKaSGaUxfhWQ0kOj9oVs6hce0wde0GsQ-7THmvdPYx--qplt >. Accessed: Apr. 15, 2021.doi: 10.11820/dlkxjz.2010.12.019.
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail....
) and others evaluated the rural non-use value of rural tourist destinations from six elements: settlement architecture, folk customs, ecological environment, pastoral landscape, farming culture and traditional life style, and rural atmosphere.

Considering the limitations of quantitative research, some scholars attempt to build the connotation system of rural tourism from the perspective of subjective perception, and establish indicators to observe and evaluate. ZHANG (2020ZHANG, X.M. Tourist-oriented Rural Research on Rural Tourism [M]. Fudan University Press, 2020.ISBN 9787309153323. Available from: <Available from: http://webvpn.eurasia.edu/https/77726476706e69737468656265737421f2f84e9769236b597b068aa98a502231fe93b1a01e11/shop/main/Login/shopFrame.do >. Accessed: Feb. 9, 2020.
http://webvpn.eurasia.edu/https/77726476...
) study is based on tourists’ perception of rural environment (nature and humanities), rural economy, rural society, rural recreation opportunities and rural facilities. The research studies the connotation of rural cognition, quantitatively studies the rurality of rural tourism in abstract tourists’ cognition, combines subjective and objective factors,explores and verifies the theoretical model of rurality in tourist-oriented rural tourism. WANG (2014WANG, M. Sense of Place: A New Perspective to Define Rural Tourism [J]. Journal of Dalian Maritime University (Social Science Edition), 2014, 02: 38-40. Available from: <Available from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFD2014&filename=DLHX201402011&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=DBOPgoRpFNbmsks-rClzwEeT41dWnml8dzAumgi8X9ybw88-7bjE0Ljqf-ruZpfO >. Accessed: Apr. 10, 2021.doi: 1671-7041(2014)02-0038-03.
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail....
) perceived that it is more accurate to define the rurality of rural tourism from subjective perception by introducing the theory of local sense, thus opening up a brand-new perspective to study the rurality of rural tourism.

To sum up, the research on the connotation of the concept of rural nature at home and abroad is expanding. Given the influence of the “cultural turn” of geography, the connotation of rurality gets rid of the shackles of regional material space and expands to the dimension of social space. Although, the definitions of rurality have not been unified, some scholars believe that rurality is no longer just a simple concept of regional characteristics, but a dynamic process of complex evolution among the main elements of a region. Most of the research on rural tourism in China focused on the concept definition, connotation interpretation and characteristics description, and most of them belonged to qualitative research.

There are outstanding problems in the development of rural tourism, so it is urgent to re-explore the rural characteristics of rural tourism. Because rural tourism itself is a complex system composed of tourists, tourist destinations, tour operators and other multi-subjects, the research on the rurality of rural tourism should also start from these tourism subjects, and concretely analyze the cognition and feelings of different tourism subjects on rurality. However, the objective measurement of rural issues ignored the development of rural people’s subjective initiative, as well as the interaction between people and rural areas.

Given the lack of participation of tourism subjects such as tourists and residents in tourist destinations, the study of rurality in rural tourism failsto solve the practical problems of rural tourism development. Therefore, this paper proposes to study rural tourism from the perspective of tourists’ rurality perception, which not only has innovative perspectives, but also helps to guide the development and construction of rural tourism destinations.

Tourist experience theory

In the book Experience Economy, American economists Joseph and James formally expound the experience economy and its concept, and mentions: “Experience economy is an economic model in which enterprises take consumers as the center, take services as platforms and goods as props, create activities for consumers to participate in and get good feelings, and obtain corresponding profits according to the experience quality of this activity.”

GURAL (2015) believed that tourist destination provides product and service which can be used by tourists to create their own feeling and experience, as it is of vital importance for the long-term success of destination to provide a pleasant travelling experience. Specifically, five aspects namely social interplay, real insight into local features, service, culture or cultural relics as well as challenge serve as the key structure that can impact the cultural travelling experience of travelling destination. Meanwhile, he considers that client experience can better predict sense of satisfaction and loyalty. Service quality is indeed an important prerequisite, yet client feeling and experience can positively shape client’s behavior to a larger extent (CETIN, 2020CETIN, G.Experience vs quality: predicting satisfaction and loyalty in services [J]. The Service Industries Journal, 2020, 40 (15-16). Available from: <Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2020.1807005 >. Accessed: Jul. 4, 2021.doi: 10.1080/02642069.2020.1807005.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2020.18...
).

XIE (2006XIE, Y.J. Research on Tourism Experience: A Phenomenological Perspective [M]. Nankai University Press, 2006 (01): 13. ISBN 9787310024759. Available from: <Available from: https://item.jd.com/12295452.html?cu=true&utm_source=www.baidu.com&utm_medium=tuiguang&utm_campaign=t_1003608409_&utm_term=94f509debe444eab925df10c3714dca2 >. Accessed: Sept. 4, 2020.
https://item.jd.com/12295452.html?cu=tru...
) thinks that goods, services and tourism activities themselves are the main aspects that affect tourists’ experience, and points out that in the era of experience economy, tourists are pursuing physical and mental satisfaction after experiencing tourism products, instead of simply leisure sightseeing and pleasure brought by consumption. XIE (2005XIE, Y.J. Tourism experience is the hard core of the tourism world [J]. Journal of Guilin Tourism College, 2005 (04): 12. Available from: <Available from: http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-GLGZ200506000.htm >. Accessed: Apr. 20, 2019.doi: CNKI:SUN:GLGZ.0.2005-06-000.
http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal...
) pointed out that tourists in the new era are increasingly pursuing inner feelings and spiritual comfort, and tourists’ experience constitutes the basic component of their tourism activities. The study of experience economy in tourism refers to the experience activities and feelings of tourists in the whole service link from the beginning of tourism action to the end of consumption behavior, which makes tourists feel a kind of psychological satisfaction. This theory is frequently used in the development of tourism.

Experience economy can be defined as the overall feeling of the whole experience activity,obtained by weighing all the feelings of tourists in the whole tourism experience activity with the cost of obtaining the feelings. More attention to experience is a psychological feeling of tourists, which is not only influenced by nature, environment and products themselves, and more importantly it is closely related to personal factors such as tourists’ mood, income, education level and tourism motivation. The overall satisfaction of tourists’ travel, the rate of revisiting in the future and even the loyalty to scenic spots mainly come from the personal experience of tourists (CETIN et al., 2017CETIN, G. et al. (2017), The superior destination experience[J], Journal of Tourismology, v.3, n. 2, pp. 33-37. Dec. 2017. Available from: <Available from: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/iuturizmoloji/issue/36431/413879 >. Accessed: Dec. 10, 2021.
https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/iuturizm...
). Therefore, the creation of experiential tourism products and the formation of product competitiveness are very important. Hence, the study of tourist experience economy theory is of great significance to the design and development of cultural tourism characteristic town’s products.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

This paper will divide the factors of rural perception through tourism experience theory,first-hand data were obtained through field questionnaire survey, and use SPSS software to analyze tourists’ survey data. When it comes to choice of research methods, it does not use the common regression analysis. Instead, it uses Pearson correlation coefficient to analyze the strength and weakness of its influence and its positive and negative correlation so as to demonstrate whether the hypothesis theory is correct or not, and give corresponding guidance.

2. Research hypotheses and conceptual models

2.1 Rurality perception dimension

According to the previous literature, rurality is the essential attribute of rural tourism. Ruralityperception refers to tourists’ feelings and experiences of characteristic products and services in rural tourist destinations during their tour. As indicated by other researchers, WEI(2014WEI, H.Y, et al. Study on tourist loyalty in rural tourist destinations based on rural perception - A case study of Shitang family in Nanjing [J]. Agricultural Technology and Economics, 2014, 03: 108-116. Available from: <Available from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFD2014&filename=NYJS201403013&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=sdUNmWNojuJnnMW-bSyUHhKvut8dHrUh17IDcw-Y_ObrJ2kejYz-Cr1xUPzrpYdq >. Accessed: Apr. 10, 2021.doi: 10.13246/j.cnki.jae.2014.03.013.
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail....
), XU(2015XU, H. An Empirical Study on the Influence of Rural Perception in Tourist Destinations on Tourists’ Satisfaction and Loyalty--Taking “Forest Family” Tourism Products as an Example [J]. Journal of Huzhou Normal University, 2015 (2): 88-94. Available from: <Available from: http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-HZHX201502018.htm >. Accessed: Feb. 18, 2020.doi:10.3969/j.issn.1009-1734.2015.02.018.
http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal...
) and others’ research on rurality perception, random interview are conducted among rural tourists to elicit the elements of their rurality perception, and checking is done with experts for advice to eliminate unnecessary indicators, and determine four dimensional indicators of rurality perception, which consists of the following:

a) Rural landscape perceptionmainly includes tourists’ perception of natural scenery, tourism environment, village buildings and landscape sketches in rural tourist destinations, which has 6 measurement indexes.

b) Perception of rural culturemainly includes tourists’ perception of rural lifestyle, rural folk culture and regional characteristics, which has 4 measurement indicators.

c) Perception of product characteristicsmainly includes tourists’ perception of rural tourism services and tourism products such as catering, accommodation and tourism activities, which has a total of 5 measurement indicators.

d) Perception of location conditions mainly includes tourists’ perception of rural geographical location, traffic conditions and other factors, which has 4 measurement indexes.

The table 1 provides specific measurement items and reference sources.

Table 1
Measurement items of each dimension of tourists' rurality perception.

Tourists’ willingness to revisit

There have been a large number of research results at home and abroad for reference on the measurement indicators of willingness to revisit. Because the willingness to revisit has a certain predictability for tourists’ future travel behavior, measuring the willingness to revisit can predict the future market situation of tourist destinations to a certain extent. In this paper, the author draws lessons from the research results of Huang and others (2020HUANG, Q, et al. Cross-local rural production and presentation in yuanjiacun, Shaanxi [J]. Geographical Research, 2020, 39 (04): 922-938. Available from: <Available from: http://www.dlyj.ac.cn/CN/Y2020/V39/I4/922 >. Accessed: Jun. 20, 2020.doi: 10.11821/dlyj020190360.
http://www.dlyj.ac.cn/CN/Y2020/V39/I4/92...
), and measures tourists’ willingness to revisit from the following three levels, namely:

a. I would like to travel here again;

b. The possibility of your next trip to Mawei Yi;

c. I will recommend others to visit here.

Finally, the Likert scale was employed by using “strongly unwilling, unwilling, not sure, willing, strongly willing” based on visitor’s own intention.

The table 2 presents the visitor satisfaction measurement items.

Table 2
Visitor satisfaction measurement items.

Hypothesis of the relationship between rurality perception and tourists’ willingness to revisit

With the increasingly fierce competition among rural tourist destinations, attracting tourists to revisit their old places can effectively save marketing costs, and is an important means to maintain the number of tourists and achieve stable income in tourist destinations. Generally speaking, the more ruralityperception in the process of rural tourism, the greater the willingness to revisit. Therefore, it is proposed that the rurality perception of tourists in Maweiyi and its four perception dimensions have a positive impact on tourists’ willingness to revisit. The specific assumptions are as follows:

H1: Rurality perception has a significant positive impact on tourists’ willingness to revisit.

H2: Rurality landscape perception positively affects tourists’ willingness to revisit;

H3: Rurality cultural perception positively affects tourists’ willingness to revisit;

H4: Perception of product characteristics positively affects tourists’ willingness to revisit;

H5: Perception of location conditions positively affects tourists’ willingness to revisit.

3. Questionnaire design

In this paper, questionnaire survey was used to collect the data needed for research. Questionnaire survey has become the most commonly used research method in the field of social science research. In order to reduce the difficulty of reading comprehension, the questionnaire was designed as simple as possible, and the academic vocabulary was expressed in colloquial words. In addition, the subjects of this survey are tourists who have been to or are traveling in Maweiyi.

The questionnaire was developed by using the Likert 5-level scale.The visitors can classify their travelling experience based on their own tourism experiences and can choose among different questionnaire questions and answers.The questionnaire is mainly composed of three parts, with a total of 34 measurement items. The first part is the basic personal information of tourists, with 9 measurement items; the second part is the tourist rural perception scale, which has 19 measurement items; the third part is the measurement scale of tourists’ willingness to revisit, which has three measurement items.

Descriptive statistical analysis of samples

This paper takes Maweiyi as a case site, and the objects of investigation are tourists who have been to Maweiyi scenic spot or are undertaking tourism activities in Maweiyi.

Maweiyi Folk Culture Experience Park, is a rising star of rural tourism in Shaanxi Province, it started construction in 2012, and the first phase of the project was completed on January 1, 2013, and then it was officially opened to the public. Since it was officially opened to the outside world on October 1, 2013, there have been a lot of tourists. From February 4 to 10, 2019, in just 7 days, Maweiyi Scenic Area received 770,000 tourists. As a national AAAA-level scenic spot, it was first named after the first post station of Chang’an in the west of the Silk Road, and was elevated into the list of top ten beautiful countryside locations in China. Maweiyi Folk Experience Village skillfully makes use of the natural tableland, the gully terrain and the abandoned cave courtyards of the local villagers. At the same time, combined with Taoist culture, taking the love story of Tang Minghuang and Yang Guifei as the cultural background and the ancient post culture as the core, it integrates cultural tourism, folk culture display, leisure experience and sightseeing, which can satisfy tourists and citizens’ pursuit of post culture, and also reflects farming culture and folk culture.

A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed in this survey. By eliminating some incomplete answers or some obviously inconsistent questionnaires, a total of 38 invalid questionnaires were eliminated and 362 valid questionnaires were collected, with an effective rate of 90.5%.

From the data in table 3, it can be seen that there are 196 women, accounting for 54.1%, and 166 male tourists, accounting for 46.9%, which indicates that in this sample questionnaire, the ratio of men and women is basically the same, and the sampling is relatively balanced. From the age structure of tourists, among the tourists in Maweiyi rural tourism, the tourists aged 18-25 are the most, followed by the tourists aged 25-36. Among these young tourists, the first part is students, who have plenty of free time and strong motivation to travel. In addition, there are some urban white-collar workers who have already begun to work. They are often very happy to travel on weekends to relieve themselves from their heavy work pressure. At the same time, they are relatively free with their money with better spending power. From the perspective of tourists’ educational level, there are more highly educated people with college degrees or above. This is because firstly, students have more free time. Secondly, they are more likely to accept new things and like rural tourist destinations with good amusements. Among all the tourists in the sample survey, 75.7% of them come to Maweiyi for the first time, which shows that the number of tourists revisiting Maweiyi is small and the situation of revisiting does not appear optimistic. To sum up, the tourists who come to Maweiyi are mainly young people from Xi’an or Xingping, who have a high education level and strong tourism consumption ability. At the same time, they pay more attention to tourism experience and have higher requirements for tourism products and services at tourist destinations. In addition, most tourists come to Maweiyi for the first time, which shows that there is a problem of low revisiting rate in rural tourism at Maweiyi.

Table 3
Statistical table of basic characteristics of tourists in Maweiyi.

Reliability and validity of questionnaire

Firstly, the reliability and validity of the questionnaire are tested. Reliability and validity test is an important part of empirical research. Empirical analysis needs to meet the reliability and validity criteria if its analysis results are to be convincing. The so-called reliabilityrefers to the reliability or stability of the scores measured in a test. That is, the scores of the same group of subjects tested many times in the same test should be consistent, so reliability refers to the degree of consistency of measurement. Cronbach’s α coefficient is used in this study. In terms of construction validity, KMO sample measure (KaiserMeyer-Olkin measure of Sampling Adequacy) and Bartlett’s test of Sphericity are used in this study to test the validity of measurement items.

Reliability test

By using SPSS software to analyze the reliability of 362 valid questionnaires, Cronbach’s value of tourists’ rural perception is 0.924, higher than 0.9, indicating that tourists’ rural perception scale has very high reliability and stability. The coefficient values of the four dimensions of tourists’ rural perception are all greater than 0.8, which shows that the internal consistency of the scale is good. Cronbach’s values of rural perception and tourist satisfaction variables inMaWeiYiscenic spots in this study are all above 0.8, which shows that this research scale has good credibility.

Validity test

Firstly, factor analysis is used to verify the constructive validity of the questionnaire.Before carrying out confirmatory factor analysis, it is necessary to measure whether there is a certain correlation among the indicators and the significance of the correlation, that is, to analyze the structure validity of the questionnaire. In general, KMO and Bartlett’s spherical test are used to test the structure validity of the questionnaire. The total range of KMO values is [0, 1]. If the KMO value of the questionnaire is higher than 0.7, it indicates that factor analysis can be done; if the KMO value is less than 0.7, it indicates that the questionnaire data is not suitable for factor analysis. At the same time, only when the sig value in Bartlett’s spherical test meets the condition of less than 0.05, the data is valid. In a word, only when the questionnaire data meet two conditions at the same time, that is, KMO value < 0.7 and P value < 0.05, can the questionnaire have structure validity, and then factor analysis can be carried out on the measurement indicators.

For this research of the KMO value of tourists’ rural perception scale is larger than 0.8, which shows that the internal factors of the scale have good correlation. The sig values are all 0.000 < 0.001, indicating that the correlation of the scale factors is very significant, indicating that the tourist rural perception scale has good structural validity.

Model and hypothesis test of the influence of rural perception dimension on revisiting intention

In this paper, SPSS20.0 is used to test Pearson correlation coefficient and significance of the relationship between MaWeiYitourists’ rural perception and tourists’ willingness to revisit, as shown in table 4.

Table 4
Pearson correlation coefficient between tourists' rural perception and tourists' willingness to revisit.

From the Pearson correlation coefficient results of tourists’ rural perception and tourists’ willingness to revisit shown in table 4, it can be concluded that there is a strong positive correlation between tourists’ rural perception and tourists’ willingness to revisit r= (0.655**, P < 0.01); There is a moderate positive correlation between tourists’ perception of rural landscape and tourists’ willingness to revisit r= (0.509**, P < 0.01); There is a weak positive correlation between tourists’ perception of rural culture and tourists’ willingness to revisit r = (0.368 **, P < 0.01); There is a moderate positive correlation between tourists’ perception of product characteristics and tourists’ willingness to revisit r= (0.558**, P < 0.01); Visitors’ perception of location conditions and tourists’ willingness to revisit are significantly weaker and have positive correlation r= (0.445**, P < 0.01). The above analysis results prove that there is a significant positive correlation between tourists’ rural perception and tourists’ willingness to revisit.Therefore, according to the analysis results of variable correlation, the previous hypotheses H1, H2, H3, H4 and H5 are verified.

DISCUSSION:

According to the data obtained in Maweiyi rural tourism destination, through Pearson correlation coefficient model, the influence coefficient of tourists’ rural perception dimension factors on willingness to revisit is obtained, and the research hypothesis is verified, and the hypothesis results are verified. Rural perception has a significant positive impact on tourists’ willingness to revisit, that is, the stronger the rural perception, the stronger the willingness to revisit. However, among the four influencing factors subdivided, they show different strengths and weaknesses. This means that different influencing factors have different influences on this sample.

The difference is reflected in the fact that the perception of product characteristics has a great influence on the willingness to revisit. Rural tourism products are embodied in various tourism activities and services such as catering, accommodation, entertainment, shopping, and others. The characteristics of rural tourism products can bring novel tourism experiences to tourists and encourage tourists to revisit. CAI (2015CAI, W. Study on the perceived value and willingness of tourists to visit villages in rural areas: Taking Chengdu Sanshengxiang as an example [J]. Journal of Southwest National University: Humanities and Social Sciences, 2015, (5): 134-138. Available from: <Available from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?FileName=XNZS201505025&DbName=CJFQ2015 >. Accessed: Sept. 2, 2020.
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail....
) reported that tourists’ perception and attribute judgment of tourism products are helpful to improve the differentiation degree of tourism products in rural tourist destinations, thus affecting tourists’ revisit choice of rural tourist destinations. PI (2016PI, P.F. Research on brand management of tourist destination based on customer experience value [J]. Research and Development, 2016, 183 (2): 168-172. Available from: <Available from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2016&filename=KFYJ201602034&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=vsS0tesWlUqsVWWFE1MpUjHHWm62_to_CHthPo3zpTWcJ-IArJt5pizHVrXu7xU8 >. Accessed: Jan. 18, 2020.doi: 10.13483/j.cnki.kfyj.2016.02.034.
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail....
) believed that if all kinds of business entities have strong tourist reception capacity and high service level, tourists will get physical comfort and inner pleasure, and tourists’ dependence on rural tourist products will be strengthened, and the perception of reliability and trust will also become the core factors affecting tourists’ willingness to revisit.

Rural landscape perception has a great influence on the willingness to revisit. Rural landscapes of rural tourist destinations include beautiful pastoral scenery, distinctive buildings and rural features. Therefore, maintaining the unique rural landscape has certain practical significance for improving tourists’ satisfaction and encouraging tourists to revisit. From the perspective of tourists’ perception of rural nature, relaxation and coziness, fresh air, peace and tranquility are the most preferred rural elements for British tourists; while calm and tranquility, relaxation, green plants and pure air are favored by French tourists. VILA-OBLITAS(2015) research shows that seeking tranquility, visiting relatives and friends and experiencing nature can represent the reasons why Spanish tourists choose a certain rural tourist destination. LIUet al. (2017LIU, F. C. et al. Connotation, measurement and mechanism: review of tourist satisfaction [J]. Areal Research and Development, 2017, 36 (5): 97-103.(Ch). Available from: <Available from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2017&filename=DYYY201705018&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=2bPIMQkOwhGLkRwOSXEhVIDoop4Si5l2e3s_67x6wev--Rp8aVmpYEbpdFZn4cxi >. Accessed: Oct. 11, 2020.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1003-2363.2017.05.018.
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail....
) and others believe that the main factors affecting tourists’ choice to carry out tourism activities in the surrounding villages of Suzhou can be summarized as returning to nature and enjoying the rural scenery. Through the above research, we can find that the beauty of rural landscape and characteristic rural architectural style have a positive correlation with tourists’ willingness to revisit.

Relatively speaking, the perception of location conditions and rural culture have a low degree of influence on the willingness to revisit. It is difficult for tourists to perceive directly during the tour through location conditions, so it has relatively little influence on tourists’ willingness to revisit.

Rural culture is embodied in rural folk activities, production and lifestyle, clothing language and so on. Creating a distinctive, simple and enthusiastic rural cultural atmosphere has a positive effect on promoting tourists to revisit. However, it cannot be directly reflected in tangible material performance, so it is reflected by creating the image of tourist destination and satisfying tourists’ intangible cultural experience perceptions. ZHU (2020ZHU, Y.H. et al. On the rural nature of rural tourism and its landscape expression [J]. Huxiang Forum, 2020, 33 (06): 134-143. Available from: <Available from: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2020&filename=HXLT202006016&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=hZ5Voj_tx1BXqqDBAHG76KfF95_VQ1KHivtJJvZhA5T51g7h4Gj1YR8i7O5cBfwZ >. Accessed: Oct. 19, 2020.doi: 10.16479/j.cnki.cn43-1160/d.2020.06.015.
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail....
) thinks that the core of rural culture is reflected at the spiritual level, in which “implicit behavior patterns” such as rural people’s beliefs, feelings of home and country, spirit of rural sages, family style and ancestral training are its core. These often exists in a potential form, which are least easily felt by tourists, except those who have the most experience of travelling and humanistic education.

In a certain sense, the fundamental driving force for rural tourism to have strong and unique tourism attraction for urban residents lies in its unique local rural tourism resources, and “rural nature” is a high generalization of the integrity and comprehensiveness of rural tourism resources. Rural nature comprehensively reflects the development level of rural areas, and is an important index to reveal and identify the differences within rural areas and rural regional spaces. It can comprehensively reflect the rural characteristics of rural tourism from the aspects of regional conditions, community participation, tourism resource base, localization of tourism industry and sustainable development (ZAMANI-FARAHANI, 2016ZAMANI-FARAHANI, H. Host attitudes toward tourism: A study of Sareyn Municipality and local community partnerships in therapeutic tourism [J]. Journal of Tourism ology , 2016 (1), 16-34. Available from: <Available from: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/227016 > Accessed: Oct. 13, 2021. doi: 10.26650/jot.2016.2.1.0002.
https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/art...
). Therefore, the perception of rural nature can not be evaluated from a single aspect. Instead, it is a comprehensive collection of a series of factors such as rural landscape, culture, products, atmosphere and region. Therefore, in the development and construction of rural tourism, it is necessary to realize the integration of rural tourism resources to show “rural nature” through rural resources.

As mentioned above, for tourists, the local elements of rural tourism destinations are an important pulling force to promote tourists to rural tourism destinations, and the willingness to communicate is an important driving factor to promote rural tourists to travel. First of all, it is necessary to strengthen the distinguishability of rural landscapes such as ancient buildings and trees, create a good local atmosphere, and maintain the attraction of rural tourist destinations to urban tourists. Secondly, it is necessary to strengthen participation in the setting of experiential projects, take the characteristic landscape of rural tourist destinations as the actual scene, set up farming experience and other activities, reinforce the communication between local residents and tourists, thusimproving tourists’ sense of experience and satisfaction.That is consistent with the tourist experience theory mentioned in the literature review.

PolicyImplications and suggestions

Rural perception plays an important role in promoting tourists’ willingness to revisit. For rural tourist destinations, only by actively promoting the rural nature of rural tourist destinations can we meet the tourism needs of rural tourists to the maximum extent. The empirical results showed that in the process of rural tourism development in Maweiyi, in order to influence tourists’ willingness to revisit through tourists’ rural perception, it is necessary to strengthen the development and protection of the rural nature of Maweiyi rural tourism destination according to the factors of tourists’ rural perception.

First of all, protecting the original rural ecological environment and local style has a positive effect on promoting tourists’ willingness to revisit. The landscape design of tourist infrastructure should follow the principle of “restoring ancient experience outside and comfortable feeling inside”, pay attention to the protection of pastoral scenery of Maweiyi, and create a strong local flavor. While developing tourism, we should adhere to the values of harmony between man and nature, and create a rural and original ecological tourism environment for tourists. In addition, the rural characteristic landscapes such as old trees, millstones and country roads should be preserved, and the protection of characteristic residential buildings in Guanzhong should be strengthened, highlighting the local rural architectural features, so that all tourists can enjoy unique rural landscapes, thusenhancing tourists’ tourism satisfaction and encouraging tourists to revisit.

Secondly, it is the purpose of many rural tourists to escape from the heavy pressure of urban life and feel the relaxed and pleasant tourist atmosphere. For rural tourists, it is an important motive for rural tourism to experience the slow-paced rural lifestyle and feel the traditional folk customs. Therefore, for Maweiyi rural tourist destination, it is very important to maintain the authenticity of the rural tourist destination and create a good rural cultural atmosphere, which can be created through the following three aspects:

a. Pay attention to excavating the cultural connotation of MaweiyiGuanzhong, and create a distinctive Maweiyi cultural brand. Promote the high integration of Guanzhong culture and tourism development, bring strong visual impact of Guanzhong culture to tourists, enhance tourists’ perception of rural culture and improve tourists’ satisfaction.

b. Keep the slow-paced lifestyle in rural areas, avoid over-commercialization of rural tourist destinations, increase folk performances and folk experience activities, and create a real rural living atmosphere.

c. Strengthen the cultural etiquette training for Maweiyi tourism professionals. Tourism professionals are not only a tourist guest who provides warm and thoughtful tourism services, but are also the disseminator of traditional Guanzhong culture in Maweiyi. Speaking local language and wearing local traditional clothes help tourists to feel the local characteristics of Maweiyi more directly, thus improving tourists’ satisfaction and promoting tourists’ revisiting behavior.

Thirdly, the characteristic tourism products of rural tourist destinations are important to attract tourists. Because there are some problems in Maweiyi, such as single entertainment forms and weak participation of tourists, it is necessary to enrich and innovate entertainment activities to effectively enhance the interest of tourists. Secondly, the tourist accommodation facilities should reflect the rural characteristics of Maweiyi and integrate into Guanzhong culture, so that tourists can have a deeper understanding of the rural characteristics of rural tourist destinations. Thirdly, they should explore the local characteristic catering, make full use of rural characteristic ingredients, enrich catering varieties, and provide tourists with green, healthy and rural flavored catering products.

Developing characteristic tourism products, including local characteristic agricultural products and handicrafts can reflect local characteristics and culture.

Finally, actively improving the traffic conditions of Maweiyi. Convenient transportation can shorten the transportation time of tourists optimizing their travel experience. Because there are many tourists from Xi’an and Xingping in Maweiyi, a special tourist line should be added during holidays to shorten the economic and time distance between tourist origins and tourist destination. At the same time, actively expand the transportation links with the outside of the province, enhance the convenience of transportation, and give tourists more choices in transportation. In addition, strengthen the marketing efforts of Maweiyi to make up for the lack of location conditions, and focus on marketing in Xi’an, Xianyang, Baoji and other metropolises, such as holding festivals to attract surrounding tourists to revisit.

CONCLUSION:

First of all, given the lack of mature tourist rural perception scales for reference, there will be some subjective factors in the selection of measurement indicators. This may lead to problems such as insufficient objectivity and comprehensiveness. This needs to be further discussed and analyzed in future researchso as to design the measurement index of tourists’ rural perception scale more scientifically and comprehensively, thus further optimizing and improving the tourists’ rural perception scale.

Secondly, the investigation of this study takes Maweiyi, a typical rural tourist destination, as the research object, yet it lacks the analysis of other types of rural tourist destinations. In future research, we can take other rural tourist destinations as study subjects to carry out regression analysis by comparing them with the results of this research in an effort to find differences and similarities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My hearty thanks go to Professor Zhong, who has given me numerous suggestions and strong support regarding the publication. Meanwhile, I would also like to thank Professor Feng Wei for his extensive evaluation and reading throughout. Also, I really appreciate the translation work done by Ma Xingmao.

REFERENCES

  • CR-2021-0856.R3

BIOETHICS AND BIOSSECURITY COMMITTEE APPROVAL

  • BIOETHICS AND BIOSSECURITY COMMITTEE APPROVAL

    This paper does not involve biology, medicine and human subjecy research, so there is no ethical issue.

Edited by

Editors: Leandro Souza da Silva(0000-0002-1636-6643)
Henrique Ribeiro Filho(0000-0002-4455-6866)

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    13 Feb 2023
  • Date of issue
    2023

History

  • Received
    02 Dec 2021
  • Accepted
    15 Sept 2022
  • Reviewed
    15 Dec 2022
Universidade Federal de Santa Maria Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Centro de Ciências Rurais , 97105-900 Santa Maria RS Brazil , Tel.: +55 55 3220-8698 , Fax: +55 55 3220-8695 - Santa Maria - RS - Brazil
E-mail: cienciarural@mail.ufsm.br