Path Exploration and Mechanism Analysis of Villagers' Livelihood Transition Intention in the Early Stage of Tourism Development

Abstract

With rural tourism playing a crucial role in rural revitalization, the transition of villagers' livelihoods in the early stage of tourism development has become the focus of academic circles, and the willingness of villagers to transition their livelihoods is of great significance for local transition and development. However, existing research is usually based on the framework of sustainable livelihoods and involves mainly five major livelihood capitals to explore the interaction between them and livelihood strategies. Thus, it fails to reflect the dynamic effect of the factors contributing to the villagers' willingness for livelihood transition. To solve this problem, this study takes Beigang village in Haikou as a case study and utilizes interviews, text encoding, and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method to explore the factors influencing villagers' livelihood transition intentions to form the path and mechanism. The main conclusions are summarized as follows: 1) Policy guidance, tourist entry, human capital, sense of place, livelihood satisfaction, economic capital, and family pressure are the seven factors that mainly influence the intention of villagers' livelihood transition, while other factors include asymmetry, complex heterogeneity, and dynamic process characteristics. 2) Although tourist entry and a sense of place are necessary conditions to develop the willingness for livelihood transition, they are neither necessary nor sufficient. Based on the internal logic of the seven main factors, the formation path of villagers' willingness to transition to a new livelihood can be divided into three types: individual cognition-oriented paths, family responsibility-driven paths, and external environment-driven paths. 3) The development of the intention of villagers to transition to a new livelihood was analyzed for tourism development, in which the individual cognition-oriented path showed the highest degree of explanation, followed by the family responsibility-driven path and the external environment-driven path. The resident villagers who represent the individual cognition-oriented and family responsibility-driven logic want to realize the transition to tourism livelihood through "Part-time tourism," and have a relatively weak intention to transit their livelihood entirely. Non-resident villagers represent the logic of the external environment-driven path. They are eager to participate in tourism through "tourism-oriented" and strongly intend to transit their livelihood entirely. The difference between resident and non-resident villagers in the path of their intention at the subjective level shows a difference in their willingness, which is the main limitation to local livelihood transition. This study expands and enriches the literature on villagers' livelihood transitions, particularly for rural tourism. Moreover, it provides theoretical and practical implications for villagers to achieve sustainable development in tourism and livelihoods.

Keywords

• villagers' livelihood
• livelihoods transition intention
• path exploration
• mechanism analysis
• beigang island, haikou