Socio-culture Impact of Tourism on the Agro-Cultural Heritage Site: Based on Local Residents' Perception

Most agro-cultural heritage tourism is community-based, for which the residents' attitudes towards tourism development are of crucial importance. Taking Ping'an Village as an example, the authors study the interaction between changes of local residents' perception resulting from tourism development by using the field investigation method and statistical analysis. By applying exploratory factor analyses, four significant tourism perceptions have been found. They are environment perception, relationship perception, benefits perception and rights perception. Statistical analyses show that local residents generally hold a positive attitude towards developing heritage tourism. However, some existing problems such as environmental pollution, cultural reconstruction, the absence of residents rights and unreasonable income distribution, which have seriously restricted the development of heritage tourism. At the end of the paper, some suggestions have been put forward to solve the problems associated with tourism development.