Impact of farmers’ participation in tourism on sustainable livelihood outcomes in border tourism areas

Abstract

Tourism, as a new way of industrial poverty alleviation, is of great significance to poverty reduction in border areas. This research takes the Sino–Vietnamese border tourism area as a case study and introduces a sustainable livelihood analysis framework. It collects questionnaire data from Napo County of Guangxi and uses structural equation modeling to analyze the behavioral intention of farmers still willing to participate in tourism after overcoming poverty. Results indicate that (1) participation motivation, participation opportunity, and participation ability had significant positive effects on farmers’ involvement level; (2) farmers’ economic, social, cultural, political, and environmental outcome perceptions had significant effects on their sustainable livelihood outcome perception; (3) farmers’ involvement level had a significant positive effect on their sustainable livelihood outcome perception; (4) the positive effect of the involvement level on behavioral intention failed to pass the significance test; and (5) farmers’ sustainable livelihood outcome perception had a significant positive impact on behavioral intention. Therefore, farmers’ involvement in poverty alleviation through tourism is a complex process of behavior and psychological perceptions.

Rural Residents’ Intention to Participate in Pro-Poor Tourism in Southern Xinjiang: A Theory of Planned Behavior Perspective

“…When individuals think that they have more resources and opportunities and less obstacles, the stronger their perceived behavioral control will be. Studies have noted that the participation ability of poor residents is the most powerful determinant of their willingness to participate in tourism [36,37]. In the context of Southern Xinjiang, this has much to do with the richness of the local tourism resources, the availability of participation opportunities, and the stability of the local tourism.…”

Livelihood Resilience or Policy Attraction? Factors Determining Households’ Willingness to Participate in Rural Tourism in Western China

“…Many existing studies have focused on the willingness of households to participate in rural tourism [ 4 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Some scholars assessed the perceived impacts of rural tourism on residents’ willingness to participate in rural tourism by using the motivation, opportunity and ability (MOA) model [ 14 ] or social representation theory [ 4 ], which is mainly from an individual perception perspective. Another strand of most previous studies has focused on the role of livelihood assets in the behavioral choice of tourism participation with analysis based on the sustainable livelihood framework.…”