Sustainable Development of Rural Tourism in An Giang Province, Vietnam

Abstract

Abstract:This study aims at sustainably developing rural tourism in An Giang Province, an agricultural province located in the South of Vietnam, by identifying the determinants of the satisfaction and revisit intention of tourists based on both qualitative and quantitative approaches. From exploratory interviews with experts and comprehensive group discussions, we developed a questionnaire for an official survey of 507 tourists at different tour-sites in An Giang Province. It is found that: (1) there are seven key factors affecting the satisfaction of the tourists, including: spirituality, tourism safety and security, people, food and beverage, natural environment, service prices and tourism infrastructure; and (2) revisit intention of tourists is affected by six factors, including: satisfaction, spirituality, tourism safety and security, people, food and beverage and service prices. Among them, spirituality is a new factor to be thoughtfully considered due to its significant influence on both the tourist satisfaction and revisit intention. From these findings, we proposed some managerial implications for the sustainable development of rural tourism in An Giang Province by enhancing the satisfaction and revisit intention of the tourists after they visit the province.

The Attractive Power of Rural Destinations and a Synergistic Community Cooperative Approach: A “Tourismability” Case

“…to that town"), and identifying Colobraro town (Basilicata region, Italy), an agricultural territory located in the south of Italy, the authors consider the proposed event as a field of study related to a renewed need for naturalness as a source of tourism for neglected areas in the shadow of coastal tourism. The authors try to identify the determinants of the created attractiveness both on the administrators'/organizers' and the community's/tourists' side (perception analysis), investigating the satisfaction, motivations, and revisit intention of tourists, the impact on the community, involvement and loyalty strategies, pre-and post-travel experience, type of tourism, etc., according to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis based on a qualitative approach through 15 semi-structured interviews [28][29][30][31][32][33] integrating the main axes in the literature [6,[34][35][36][37][38]. In this sense, gap identification is strictly related to the following: (1) lower interest in investigating specific issues provided by inner areas, as noted by Hall and Sharples [27]; (2) the scarcity in the literature of studies on events and festivals, as noted by Folgado-Fernández et al [6]; and (3) less research identified by the authors on rural areas and rural communities according to tourism and the collaborative synergic involvement approach (cooperation) of the community in event-making ( Figure 2).…”

“…It seems to be well-known and recognized that spreading tourism would have strong potential to contribute to regional growth and development [12]. In fact, on the economic side, nowadays tourism can be considered as one of the main strategic points in job creation, exchange trade, and improved development standards of local residents and can support intersecting sectors, shaped by the nonsmoking sector [34,60], which means the sector adds value without pollution. In contrast, another sector that would be important for regional development is agriculture.…”

“…Thanh Long and Nguyen [34] consider sustainable development of the tourism industry according to Muller [115], as a balance between cultural and economic health considering people's welfare, and caring and for protecting natural resources for the satisfaction of tourists.…”

STEAM-ME: A Novel Model for Successful Kaizen Implementation and Sustainable Performance of SMEs in Vietnam

“…Literally, sustainable performance and sustainability have been interesting topics in different research areas as found in [32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. Several researchers, such as Long & Nguyen [39], Norazlan et al [40], Moldan et al [41], and Schoenherr [42], agreed that the sustainable performance is measured with three dimensions, namely, (1) economic performance, defined as the extent to which an organization improves its operations, market, and financial results; (2) environment performance, defined as the extent to which an organization improves its control of pollution and its resource efficiency; and (3) social performance, defined as the extent to which an organization improves its practical outcomes related to its employees and community. Considered as the key pillars of triple bottom line theory, balancing these dimensions is critical to improve organizational competitive advantages [43].…”

“…And, key criteria to judge if a scale is considered reliable include the following: (1) all corrected item-total correlations of its components are > 0.3; (2) its coefficient ≥ 0.7 [196]. After EFA and scale reliability analysis, the extracted factors are further analyzed with (1) confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to affirm their unidirectionality, internal consistency, convergence value, and distinguishing value; (2) structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the validity of the proposed research model and stated hypotheses [39,43]. According to Hair et al [197] and Steenkamp & Trijp [198], these two analyses are considered appropriate if the following criteria are satisfied: (1) the significance value (pvalue) of the Chi-square test ≤ 0.05; (2) ratio of Chi-square (CMIN) over the degree of freedom (df), CMIN/df ≤ 2.00 (in some cases, CMIN/df ≤ 3.00 is also acceptable); (3) the goodness of fit index (GFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), and comparative fit index (CFI) ≥ 0.90; (4) root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) ≤ 0.08; (5) overall reliability ≥ 0.6; and (6) extracted variance ≥ 0.5.…”