How does industrial transformation enhance the development of coastal fishing villages: Lessons learned from different transformation models in Qingdao, China

Abstract

With rapid urbanization and the declining marine fishery, a large number of Chinese coastal fishing villages have transformed into new fishing villages with new industrial structures. Attempting to reveal the process and mechanism of fishing villages’ revitalization driven by industrial transformation, this paper makes the definitions of four typical fishing village transformation types, i.e., fishery-dominated type (FT), fishing products processing dominated type (FPPT), and fishing village tourism dominated type (FVTT), and diversified development village type (DDT), and takes four typical transformed coastal fishing villages in Qingdao New Area as our research objects. Based on field observation and comparison of typical transformed fishing villages, this paper explores how industrial transformation enhances the development of coastal fishing villages and what makes better industrial transformation in these villages. More importantly, the findings from these four different transformed cases illustrate how government, village elites, public participatory, enterprises, the cultural and technological creativity can promote village revitalization. This study could help better understand the development process and different driving forces functions in the process of industrial transformation in coastal fishing villages.