The Influence of Perceived Physical and Aesthetic Quality of Rural Settlements on Tourists’ Preferences—A Case Study of Zhaoxing Dong Village

Abstract

Rural settlements, as crucial human habitats, encompass various values such as residential living, cultural tourism, and industrial development. This paper investigates the environmental physical and aesthetic factors perceived by tourists, which influence their preferences for rural settlement environments. Previous studies have predominantly focused on evaluating the impacts of physical or aesthetic factors on tourists’ environmental preferences, with limited research simultaneously examining their combined effects. To reduce this research gap, we selected Zhaoxing Dong Village in China, characterized by typical rural environmental traits, and collected 450 valid questionnaires. The questionnaire data underwent correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The results indicate that when considering only environmental physical quality factors, most of the physical quality factors are significantly correlated with tourists’ preferences. Among them, “visual quality” shows the highest correlation, followed by “facility” and “maintenance”, while “security” shows the lowest correlation. When aesthetic quality factors are added to the model as independent variables, they enhance the explanatory power of the model and exhibit more significant associations compared to the relationship between physical quality factors and preferences. Among the aesthetic quality factors, “multisensory” and “sublime” demonstrate the highest correlation, whereas “diversity” shows the lowest correlation. The current study demonstrates the validity of the two scales for measuring tourists’ perceived levels of physical and aesthetic quality in rural settlement environments. These findings contribute to the effective utilization of environmental capital within rural settlements and provide guidance for rural settlement planning and design.