Evaluation of Rural Tourism Resources Based on the Tourists Perspective: A Case Study of Lanzhou City, China

Abstract

Rural tourism has become a hot spot in China's tourism development. Based on the AHP model and the comprehensive evaluation method of fuzzy cognition, this paper builds an evaluation system for the evaluation of rural tourism resources, including resource value, environmental factors, reception conditions with three criterion layers, and 25 evaluation factors. We recovered 574 valid questionnaires through two online forms and field research in Lanzhou city, and then used them to complete the empirical analysis. The results show four main aspects of the tourists' perspective on rural tourism resources. Firstly, rural tourists are concerned about higher service facilities. The evaluation of rural tourism resources pays more attention to the reception conditions, and tourists pay more attention to the facilities of the reception conditions. In addition, the reception condition value accounts for a more concentrated 8–10 points (61.4%), which is higher than environmental elements (58.87%) and the value of the resource itself (54.26%). Secondly, tourists' attention to rural tourism resources mainly focuses on the pleasurable (0.1152), tour line design (0.1014), experience (0.0765), ornamental (0.0747) and other aspects. Thirdly, the degree of cognition mainly focuses on nature (4508), environmental safety (4469), pleasantness (4387), accommodation conditions (4367), tour line design (4363) and other aspects of the rural tourism resources. Fourthly, the cognition of rural tourism resources is basically given priority with 6–9 points, and environmental factors accounted for the highest portion. However, rural tourists have higher expectations for the popularization and education of rural tourism resources, but the sense of acquisition is relatively low. Through the further improvement and improvement of the naturalness of environmental resources, environmental safety of reception conditions, and the enjoyment of external traffic and resource value, the overall benefit of rural tourism resources is maximized. The results of this study can provide reference for the theoretical foundation of rural tourism resources.