The community potential for tourism development in agricultural heritage sites: A case study of Qingtian County

Abstract

This paper is Presented based on a program known as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems(GIAHS),initiated in 2002 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO).Five traditional agricultural pilot sites at global scale were selected to be the GIAHS initiatives in 2005,including the Rice-Fish system in Longxian Village of Qingtian County,Zhejiang Province,China.Two new pilot sites were listed by FAO in 2010 and there would be more systems in the inventory in the future.The key objective of the program is to conserve the traditional agricultural systems and its biodiversity and cultural diversity in a dynamic way. Since GIAHS is different from the world cultural heritage and natural heritage and it focuses more on the co-evolution of human beings and nature and the livelihood of the local community,the local participation in the agricultural heritage sites is of great importance to the conservation of agricultural heritage and tourism development.Hence,evaluating the community potential on the agricultural heritage conservation and tourism development in a scientific way is the basis of the dynamic conservation and adaptive management of the GIAHS.By using the structural equation modeling(SEM) approach and establishing the attitude-behavior model,this paper tries to assess the community potential in agricultural heritage sites and also to realize the scale change from village level to county level in line with the distance reduction rule,in order to lay the basis for the agricultural heritage dynamic conservation and adaptive management.The study showed: 1) SEM and the attitude-behavior model are the new methods of evaluating the tourism community potential in agricultural heritage sites;2) There is an obvious spatial distance reduction of the community potential by GIS assistance;3) The case study indicated that the tourism community potential is high in Qingtian County and the scale change from village level to county level is effective,but obviously,the good perception and attitude do not make sure of the sufficient community participation behavior,and the gap still need to be filled in the development process.