Tourist perceptions of landscape in Chinese traditional villages: analysis based on online data

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to explore how tourists perceive the landscapes in traditional Chinese villages and to provide recommendations for developing and utilizing resources that improve these landscapes. To this end, a database containing over 13,000 online comments from tourists was created from domestic travel websites. A Likert scale was applied to score tourists’ qualitative perceptions of the landscapes of five traditional villages, and based on the importance-satisfaction analysis approach, a model to evaluate satisfaction with – and importance of – landscape indicators was created. The results indicated that the perception of visual elements was extremely important for tourists, but satisfaction scores for some indicators were low. Tourists’ satisfaction with tactile perception was low, and its importance was also low. Regarding physical activities available in villages, satisfaction and importance scores were high. Satisfaction with olfactory elements was also high but not important. Based on the evaluation model, traditional Chinese villages should prioritize the following: (1) protecting overall village style and features, (2) improving village service facilities, and (3) developing characteristic folkloric and cultural activities to enrich tourists’ behavioral experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Traditional village
• landscape perception
• online data
• rural tourism

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank three students (Wu Xiangquan, Yi Xiang, Li Jiamin) majoring in landscape architecture of Huaihua University for their preliminary processing of the original data in the early stage of the paper. We also gratefully acknowledge the constructive feedback from anonymous reviewers, which helped to improve our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Huaheng Shen

Huaheng Shen is currently studying for a PhD at the School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia. He is also a lecturer at the School of Fine Arts and Art Instute of Huaihua University, China. His research area is tourist landscape perception. His research interests also include traditional village tourist behavior, rural landscape design and image perception of tourist destinations. His work has been published in Journal of Hundred Schools in Arts, Green Science and Technology, Journal of Huaihua University, etc.

Nor Fadzila Aziz

Nor Fadzila Aziz (PhD) is a senior lecturer at the School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, specializing in landscape architecture. Her research areas are children’s environment, cultural landscape, urban greening, and community participation in planning. She has published more than 30 papers in journals and conference proceedings, and 1 chapter in a book with Geographies of Children and Young People, Springer.

Menglan Huang

Menglan Huang is currently studying for a PhD at the School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia. She is also a lecturer at the School of Geography and Resource Science, Neijiang Normal University, China. She obtained her mater degree from College of Landscape Architecture, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, China. Her research interest includes landscape planning, landscape design and Landscape big data. Her work has been published in Journal of Green Science and Technology, Business & Luxury Travel, Shihezi Science and Technology, etc.

Lingyun Yu

Lingyun Yu is currently an associate professor at the school fine arts and design of Huaihua university. her research area is the protection and development of traditional villages. she has published 15 papers and written 2 monographs.

Zhigen Liu

Zhigen Liu is currently a lecturer at the school of fine arts and design of Huaihua University. He received a master’s degree from Guangzhou University. The main research fields are urban remotesensing, traditional village protection, and human settlements. His works have been published in Journal of Economic Geography, Agricultural Engineering, Guangdong Agricultural Science and Technology, Green Science and Technology, etc.