How “cultural reshaping” affects rural tourism development in China - a case from zhejiang beautiful countryside demonstration area

Abstract

A number of studies have been carried out on the importance and connotation of tourism culture. However, from the literature study of tourism culture, it is found that there is still a gap between the remolding of tourism culture and the development of tourism enterprises in the digital era. This study aims to identify the enterprise clustering effect and employment benefit of rural tourism culture reshaping. By empirical research, this study establishes a new conceptual research framework for rural tourism sustainability to cover the gap between the cultural reshaping and enterprise development for rural tourism in Zhejiang. We began with investigation to villagers on their acceptance of reshaped tourism culture. Through interviews with entrepreneurs, this study investigates the relationship between tourism cultural reshaping and tourism enterprise image. An enterprise network of regional tourism cultural IP image has been established to describe the density among the whole tourism cultural industry. The location entropy index is adopted to show the employment in tourism enterprises. This index reflects residents’ acceptance of the reshaped cultural image as a key influencing factor of enterprises’ sustainable development. Furthermore, it is found that tourism cultural reshaping is a significant base for rural tourism industry clustering. The research results suggest that tourism corporation can contribute to the local tourism economy by reshaping culture.

Keywords

Tourism culture sustainable development culture reshaping industry clustering tourism cultural image classic traditional culture

Introduction

Traditional rural culture is the internal driving force behind rural tourism development and is an important part of rural tourism. Rural culture is the foundation that makes rural tourism attractive (Zhou et al., 2013). Rural culture is of great significance to the rural economy, villagers’ lives and the stable development of rural areas. It partly affects the tourists and residents’ material life and spiritual world, and determines the development and inheritance of local culture (Ahebwa et al., 2016; Evstrop’eva, 2013). Rural culture is extensive and profound in content, which mainly includes local food, local architectures, folk customs, celebrity anecdotes and myths or legends. In analysis of tourism culture from tourists perspective, four factors need to be considered: local culture, lifestyle of locals, space availability, and activities offered (Stone and Nyaupane, 2019). Previous research on tourism culture has primarily focused on these categories, tourism culture consists of material, institutional, behavioural and spiritual culture, with spiritual culture as its core. From the perspective of tourism value, tourism culture can be divided into landscape culture, settlement culture, architectural culture and folk culture (Stoddart and Graham, 2016; Liu, 2018). Some scholars also classify it into material, spiritual and institutional categories. Rural tourism culture can promote tourism development, as well as improve the cultural and socio-economic environments in rural areas. Rural tourism culture is a crucial guarantee for the balanced development of rural areas in China (Mironenko and El’darov, 2016).

Rural tourism is an indispensable part of tourism culture and an important carrier of cultural inheritance (Shi et al., 2016). Rural area are rich in cultural wealth. They provide a place for production, life, and cultural creation, and constitute a typical cultural space that affects people’s livelihoods and lifestyles (Mbaiwa, 2010). Rural culture is extensive and rich in content, which is an important source for developing rural tourism.

Corresponding information

This study first discusses rural tourism culture’s scope, importance and role in sustainable development and analyses the main influence and significance of tourism culture in the new digital economic era. It then builds the theoretical framework for rural tourism culture reshaping. Taking Xiaofeng Town in Anji County in Zhejiang Province as an example, this study investigates the current situation of culture reshaping. It analyses the development strategies of tourism enterprises through the collected data. Rresidents’ attitudes towards tourism culture were obtained through a questionnaire survey conducted by our research. Comparative statistics show that most of residents have positive attitudes towards tourism cultural development. The location quotient index was adopted to analyse the status and trend of the synchronous development of tourism enterprises and the clustering of the rural tourism industry. Finally, this study investigates the spatial clustering of tourism enterprises using the statistics of their industry scale and new jobs they provide and further reports the steady development of tourism culture.

Tourism culture includes a wide range material, institutional, behavioural, and spiritual concepts. Among these, spiritual culture is the most important aspect of tourism culture. It is considered a key factor in the development of rural tourism. With the smooth development of rural tourism, rural tourism culture will continue to promote rural tourism and rural spiritual civilisation. As a cultural industry, the basic role of tourism culture cannot be ignored. The sustainable development of tourism culture advocates the deep integration of modern agricultural culture and rural tourism culture (Ollenburg, 2008; Lin et al., 2020; Ragulina et al., 2021). This can bridge the gap between urban and rural culture, and meet the needs of urban and rural tourists for customised tourism products.

In essence, sustainable tourism development involves the harmonious development of tourism with nature, culture and the human living environment. Rural tourism is an important link in implementing of the Rural Revitalisation Strategy, as pointed out in the ‘Guidelines on promoting sustainable development of rural tourism’ issued by 18 Chinese departments, including the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, on 15 November 2018. Rural tourism is essentially a cultural activity that draws people from different cultures. Rural tourism development relies heavily on local traditional culture and regional characteristic culture, highlighting the importance of protecting unique rural culture and rural ecological environment for sustainable development (Xiao and Lin, 2004; Lin et al., 2020).

Literature review

Local governments should actively develop rural tourism and help firms to enrich the content of rural culture based on traditional classic culture (Hsiuyen et al., 2021). The integration of e-commerce and culture based on digital internet technology has fully demonstrated its potential and advantages in the growth of rural tourism enterprises, which will be the future trend in China’s rural tourism economy. The digital strategy enables enterprises to get more resources from their networks and use them more effectively to gain a competitive advantage (Hsiuyen et al., 2021). The rapid growth of e-commerce in rural areas has heralded the advent of the digital age, which has brought fundamental changes to rural tourism enterprises. Competition among rural tourism enterprises has gradually shifted from product prices to the competition of online customer flow and corporate cultural activities.

With the rapid increase in the number of enterprises on the cloud, the digital technology has played a key role in promoting the rural tourism industry and the reshaping of tourism culture. In digital society and digital tourism, digital platforms and digital marketing methods should be adopted to create a healthy social atmosphere in each village, so as to establish a stable rural tourism culture system (Zhang et al., 2020).

The coordinated development of rural tourism and rural livelihood results from the interaction of various driving factors, including cultural resource agglomeration, the social economy, the tourism industry chain and a harmonious society (Bickford et al., 2017). Enterprises have transformed their focus from natural resources, capital, the environment and human resources to core competitiveness and the pursuit and identification of corporate culture. Tourism enterprises should emphasise more on sustainability to gain a sustainable competitive advantage and adapt to operational, creative, and strategic changes (Liu et al., 2020; Teye et al., 2002). Culture is the essence of the tourism industy. Traditional rural tourism enterprises are poor at product design, product processing, product sales and after-sales service because the industrial chain is short and seasonal fluctuations primarily affect marketing activities. Some promotional activities of tourism e-commerce enterprises have poor cultural connotations, and the promotional information fails to sufficiently match the value of online tourists (María José et al., 2021; Lankford, 2001).

With the advent of China’s holistic tourism and development driven by digital Internet technology, digital tourism and cultural experience have emerged as inevitable trends for cultural tourism. The sustainable development strategy proposed under the research condition of global environmental challenge is associated with firms’ sustainable development and multifaceted involving economic, social, and environmental concerns (Hart Stuart et al., 2005). Village tourism is usually regarded as a dynamic adaptive management approach. Rural tourism has been developing rapidly in China and is considered to be an important engine for boosting rural economic growth (Sun et al., 2021). E-commerce represents Internet-based business activity. By integrating modern electronic equipment and digital Internet technology, the digital platforms have steadily expanded (Campbell, 1999; Young and Paul, 2012). Based on the above literature research, this study proposes a theoretical research framework that considers the reshaping of tourism culture as the premise of tourism enterprises’ development and considers tourism cultural images, enterprise clustering, and employment as essential factors for enhancing the sustainable vitality of the tourism market. Sustainable tourism development is measured by cultural image, enterprise clustering and employment. The proposed framework is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Conceptual framework of the study.

Overview of xiaofeng

Xiaofeng Town has witnessed a steady rise in the number of luxury culture-themed tourism enterprises represented by the Wufengshan Mountain Characteristic Bed and breakfast (B & B), Narada Hotel, and Midsummer Dream B & B A group of tourism enterprises with new enterprise patterns and profound cultural heritage has formed a tourism enterprise system, realising the high integration of primary, secondary and tertiary industries in tourism. Xiaofeng Town is striving to deepen the supply-side reform of the tourism industry for further upgradation and sustainable development.

Under the long-lasting influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, rural tourism enterprises should pay more attention to their own development interests and integrate their own values with social values. With the development of the digital economy, medium and high-level individual tourists have brought opportunities and challenges to villages during the epidemic. Xiaofeng Town and Anji County’s geographical zoning maps are illustrated in Figure 2(a) and Figure 2(b), respectively.

Figure 2.

(a) Map of the xiaofeng town. (b) Map of the anji county.

Following the trend of e-commerce, Xiaofeng Town focused on building an upgraded version of the Beautiful Rural Demonstration Towns and Villages based on of the National Rural Revitalization Strategy. The key to enterprise culture driving enterprise innovation lies in stimulating and promoting enterprise’s innovative ideas, behaviors and activities (Brodhag, 2010; Mokha, 2021). A competitive advantage is to explore the cultural implications of rural tourism products with regional historical and cultural significance. The rural ecological landscape and culture are the basis of rural tourism and should be scientifically protected. Industry without cultural significance is uninspiring and lacks sustainable power (Verbeke and Mckerche, 2013). The spiritual culture of tourism enterprises imbibes the value of the local culture and influences people’s belief. Therefore the enterprise should not only inherit the local cultural heritage, but also protect and reshape the excellent classic traditional culture. In the reshaping of corporate culture, owners should pay more attention to the authenticity and innovation of the local culture.

With increasingly fierce competition among enterprises, the importance of culture has been increasingly recognised. Tourism enterprises should strive to improve their cultural competence and ensure that their products and brands have a cultural influence.

Investigation

Rural spiritual civilisation and rural tourism culture are the internal driving forces and prerequisites for the economic development of the new socialist countryside (Verbeke and Mckerche, 2013). Focusing on the cultural innovation and reshaping, Xiaofeng Town has been continuously optimising the tourism culture economy, and has developed into a famous culture industrial town with industrial agglomeration, cultural innovation, artificial intelligence customisation and developed e-commerce.

Xiaofeng Town has paid special attention to the reshaping of its tourism culture. The listed bamboo enterprises and national high-tech enterprises play a leading role in integrating the bamboo cultural elements into the ‘tourism cultural resources’, and expanding core processing technology to the ecological health furniture, bamboo health food and other green tourism and culture industries. The development of these enterprises has enhanced the ‘sense of honour’ among the town’s people. A vibrant atmosphere will continue to imbue advanced culture in residents’ daily lives. The local enterprise culture, tourism culture and a series of regional folk culture activities have brought economic benefits and influenced to local tourism expansion:

First, it has promoted tourism culture, realised the in-depth integration of many industries, and formed an industrial system that integrated e-commerce, food and accommodation, tourism, shopping and entertainment (Table 1). This has allowed tourists to experience the rich tourism cultural activities. The first column in Table 1 shows the representative rural tourism enterprise. The second column shows the types and cultural image codes of the enterprises. The third column presents the characteristic industrial chain. For example, the letter ‘E’ represents ecology and health. Local enterprises prominent in the developing healthy and ecological industries include the Senhai International Health Valley and the Natural Home-care Center, which have a distinct image of healthy tourism and a culture of caring for older adults. Xiaofeng Town’s tourism industry has formed a scientific and ideal industrial structure. The development layout of the enterprise has gradually materialised into a spatial cluster, demonstrating the advantages of scale development.

Table 1.

Tourism cultural image and representative enterprises.

Representative enterprises	Tourism cultural code/image	Characteristics of industry chain
1. Senhai international health valley; natural home-care center;	E: Ecology and health;	Ecological and healthy tourism; care of older adults;
2. Qingli rural complex in nanxi; xiaode cultural park; shuiqing culture park;	S:Sightseeing; folklore; filial piety; interaction;	Agriculture; leisure; sightseeing;
3. Nanxi water park; bamboo park; happy storm water paradise;	A:Amusement; parent-child activities; experience;	Amusement; sports;
4. Midsummer dream B & B; wufeng mountain B & B; junlan hotel;	V: Vacation; leisure;	Exquisite characteristic garden;
5.Black felt hat wine; zigouwu tea; fortune bamboo product enterprise;	T: Theme; cultural creation; resources;	Bamboo; wine; tea industry
6. Xiaofeng revolutionary martyrs’ cemetery; xiangjia leather shadow;	H: History; ‘red’ tourism; art; philology and humanities;	National defense; social science; education base

Source: The data are from the local Industrial and Commercial Bureau; Sorted by the authors.

Figure 3.

Industrial layout of Xiaofeng town.The numbers 1-6 in Figure 3 represent the typical enterprises in Table 1, and the industrial image/code is represented by the initial letters E\R\A\V\T\H.

Second, through tourists’ various cultural activities, both residents and tourists can broaden their vision. Cultural exchanges can strengthen the image identification of enterprises and relationship between the Communist Party and the masses. With the deepeningreform of the supply-side structure of the tourism industry, Xiaofeng has gradually become a modern town with a distinctive cultural industry and digital economic advantage. The authors list the representative enterprises and associated tourism cultural image codes in Table 1. The pattern can be easily measured and used as information for a business model. The letter ‘S’ in the second column represents sightseeing, folklore, etc. The letter ‘A’ denotes amusement, parent-child activities and experience, etc. ‘V’ represents vacation and leisure, etc. ‘T’ the theme, cultural creation, and resources, etc. and ‘H’ history, red tourism, art philology, and humanities etc.

Cases of shiguiqiao and baiyang village

The research group visited Shiguqiao Village, south of Xiaofeng Town. A similar cultural phenomenon can be observed for the Heye Group, a typical regional feature of developing a local tourism culture.

The Heye Group combines with the characteristics of local natural resources with the spiritual pursuit of urban tourists, reshapes the spiritual culture and takes ‘Harmony’ as the enterprise conception culture. It depicts the details of cultural elements and cultural experiences allowing tourists to pursue nostalgia on chicken farms, bamboo forests, vegetable fields and cottages and feel the embrace of nature in orchards, tea gardens, cooking and country streams. Thus, the tourism culture is integrated into the surrounding rural landscape. It allows consumers to pay these services via mobile phone apps.

Barbieri C. uses a special theoretical framework of substantial descriptive, ontological and epistemological synthesis to better assist agritourism spaces in negotiating growing societal dissonances emanating from the rural urban gap (Barbieri, 2019). This indicates that culture lovers seek a wide variety of cultural products and experiences, allowing innovation in the process of rural tour. Tourists to choose their cultural destinations through electronic commerce platforms and keep abreast of the latest news on local tourism and cultural activity itineraries. People interested in such a cultural atmosphere can place orders through e-commerce platforms.

Results

Attitude of residents

A total of 203 valid questionnaires were collected through a survey of randomly-selected residents’ attitudes towards tourism culture(Table 2(a), 67.5% of whom were women and 32.5% were men). Respondents with an education level above high school and secondary vocational school accounted for 36%. According to the survey results, residents had different perceptions of tourism culture. In addition, enthusiastic supporters and ordinary supporters accounted for 81% of the respondents. The remaining 19% were cool-headed supporters, and no one disapproved of tourism culture, as shown in Table 2(b).

Table 2a.

SOCIO-demographics of respondents.

Socio-demographic	Frequency	%
Indicators
Gender
Men	66	32.5%
Women	137	67.5%
Age group
Younger than 39	25	12.3%
40–49 years	146	71.9%
50 years and older	32	15.8%
Level of formal education
Below high school	123	60.6%
High school or technical degree	75	36.9%
College	6	2.9%

Source: The data are drawn from questionnaires.

Table 2b.

The attitude of residents towards tourism culture.

(Tourism cultural attitudes) group name	Similar name	Description of group attitude	%
Tourism culture lover	Passionate supporter	A strong opinion in favor	67
Tourism culture supporter	Ordinary supporters	A light opinion in favor	14
Tourism culture scruples	Calmest supporter	A light opinion in opposition	19
Tourism culture haters	Naysayers	Strong opposition	0

Source: The data are drawn from questionnaires.

In the semi-structured interviews, the research group randomly selected respondents. To investigate the opinions of residents, tourism operators and local government officials, the research group collected 30 interviewers’ records, and analysed them using the ROSTcm semantic network, as shown in Table 3. Words were divided into three groups according to their frequency of occurrence. The high-frequency group includes culture, development, civilisation, and rural, followed by the group of cultural image, economy, tourist and sightseeing, and the group comprising tourism, verdant farmland hills, clear waters and amusement. It can thus be concluded that the local residents have a deep understanding and support tourism cultural development, tourism image and sustainable development, and support the sustainable development of rural cultural tourism. Residents’ cultural recognition is deepening, which is likely to further promote their understanding of the reconstructed culture and support for the image of tourism culture.

Table 3.

High frequency words from local people by interviews.

First level	Frequency	Second level	Frequency	Third level	Frequency
Culture	19	Cultural image	9	tourism	5
development	15	economy	8	farmland	4
civilisation	13	tourist	7	Verdant hills and green waters	4
Rural	11	sightseeing	6	amusement	3

Source: The data are from the questionaires.

Spatial clustering

The rapid growth of digital technology has fostered the rapid spread of enterprise image. Xiaofeng Town has changed from a traditional sightseeing destination to a complex area with an adequate industrial structure and innovative business agglomeration (Table 4). To develop tourism cultural industry, Xiaofeng focuses on building cultural enterprises, improving e-commerce platforms and promoting smart tourism. Table 4 shows the data on the rural tourism industry in Xiaofeng Town (number of enterprises with 10 or more employees per 10 km²).

Table 4.

The distribution and clustering of tourism cultural enterprises in Xiaofeng Town after 2000.

Point density Number/10 km²	Before 2000	2010	2016	2018	2020
0–0.01	Yunhong tower; Xiaofeng revolutionary Martyrs’Cemetery; Basin bamboo garden; Longwang mountain natural reserve
0.01–0.04		Junlan hotel; Black felt hat wine; Zigouwu tea; Huangpu river No.1 drift; Huangyuan resort;	Natural home-care center; Xiangjia leather shadow; Senhai international health valley; Xiaode culture park;
0.05–0.08			Midsummer dream; Wufeng mountain four seasons valley B & B; Wufeng mountain sports resort;Yinxi resort;	Longwanghu villa;Qingli rural complex in Nanxi;Shuiqing culture park;
0.09–0.13^*				Happy storm water park; Bamboos Park,Water industry; Five village countryside complex; Mengfu·Heye filial hall	Qingde-natural landscape garden;
0.13–0.16^*					Dreamland nanxi water park; Zhuxikou village wetland park; Fruit and vegetable picking base; Xiatang village stone museum;

Source: The data are from local Industrial and Commercial Bureau.

Note: ^*indicates a high degree of clustering.

Local Customs and cultural parks are other good examples. To realise the sustainable development of rural tourism and improve the tourism characteristics, it is necessary to refine and reshape rural tourism culture. The characteristics that add value to the agricultural landscape must be highlighted by embedding of local culture, enhancing the core competitiveness of rural tourism products, and strengthening agriculture’s cultural operation ability and cultural cohesion (Liu et al., 2021).

Product sales

The tourism industry should begin with the characteristics of tourism culture. The sale of tourism products is the primary way to transform tourism culture into a cultural economy, and the competition for tourism products is extremely fierce. Given the typical development of the tourism economy in townships and the arrival of the era of mass tourism, the sale of tourism cultural products in other places is not ideal. Nevertheless, rural areas experience problems such as scattered resources, small sales volumes, and product promotion and upgrading. The major challenge for tourism enterprises in Xiaofeng Town is to create new branded products and further enhance the industry visibility of tourism products while attracting more tourism consumers. With the expansion and popularisation of the new tourism market, the demand for tourism cultural products is increasing rapidly, and the need for high-quality tourism service is also on increasing.

To promote the unique products of tourism enterprises in Xiaofeng Town, local governments have taken the lead in enhancing in-depth cooperation among tourism enterprises, large-scale digital platforms, and e-commerce platforms with local cultural characteristics such as the Pastoral Complex, Modern Agricultural Exhibition Area, Ecological Waterfront Health Zone, and Idyllic Water experience area.

Xiaofeng Town is revitalised by strengthening the development strategy of ‘Internet + tourism’ which has integrated cultural tourism, theme tourism, family outings, ecotourism, agricultural tourism, and other tourism forms. This allows tourists to experience the spiritual culture left by their ancestors and broadens the sales channel of tourism products. For example, Narada Hotel is located on 1^# Road Junlan of Xiaofeng Town, and customers can easily and conveniently make a booking on digital trading platforms. The enterprise culture of Narada Hotel is to ‘feel detached, enjoy the peaceful holiday’ pastoral lifestyle, through integrating resources, industrial cooperation, cultural transformation and other forms to realise industrial cultural assimilation rapidly.

Employment opportunity

Data from 4 of the 14 villages showed an increasing trend in the number of tourism cultural-related jobs. The remaining space in these villages can accommodate more tourism enterprises, attracting new enterprises and related investment. For example, 512 out of its 2431 residents in Xiatang Village in 2018 were engaged in tourism cultural industries, accounting for 21% of the total employment (Table 5).

Table5.

Tourism culture-related jobs of four villages in 2018.

Administrative village	Number of tourism cultural jobs (2018)	Male of tourism cultural jobs number (2018)	Female of tourism cultural jobs number (2018)	Ratio of tourism cultural jobs to total employment (2018)	Total employment/population (2018)
Zuxikou village	540	153	387	0.281	1627/1919
Baiyang village	456	175	281	0.235	1206/1937
Hengxiwu village	318	121	197	0.286	857/1110
Xitang village	512	192	320	0.211	1938/2431

Source: The data are from the local Industrial and Commercial Bureau.

To investigate the expansion of the tourism enterprises, the authors obtained the employee data from the Department of Work and Pensions. Figure 4 shows the ratio of culture-related tourism jobs to the total employment from 2015 to 2020. The ‘Five Village Alliance’ programme experienced a stable growth period followed by an exponential rise in 2018, and then a minor decrease of 7% in the last column owing to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Figure 4 shows the growth in the total number of tourism employees and culture-related jobs. Specifically, male employees accounted for 11% of the total in 2010 and 14% in 2019, and women accounted for 25% in 2010 and 36% in 2019. In 2018, the female employees in tourism culture industry accounted for 36% of the total female employees in Xiaofeng Town.

Figure 4.

Growth of tourism culture-related jobs in Xiaofeng Town (2010–2020). Source: The data are from department of work and pension statistics.

Tourism culture has become the cultural essence of Xiaofeng Town and is the basis for the cooperation between enterprises and the government to create more employment opportunities for locals. There were 1597 large and small tourism enterprises in Anji County. Among them, only 12 larger-scale tourism enterprises were in Xiaofeng Town in 2016, which rose to 35 in 2020. Anji County has gradually increased its number of enterprises from 115 in 2016 to 261 in 2020 (Table 6). The number of enterprises in Xiaofeng has increased by an average of five to seven.

Table 6.

Number of Xiaofeng town and anji county tourism enterprises from 2016 to 2020.

Categories of enterprises	Region	Number for 2016	Number for 2017	Number for 2018	Number for 2019	Number for 2020
Larger scale	Xiaofeng town	12	17	20	28	35
Larger scale	Anji county	115	138	156	204	261
Tourism enterprises	Anji county	1232	1325	1391	1535	1597

Source: The data are from the local Industrial and Commercial Bureau.

It attracts a large number of tourists and provides a certain number of tourism-related jobs. Xiaofeng Town has realised the goal of retaining people in the rural tourism industry, make it full of cultural vitality, excavating cultural elements at a greater depth and advancing the traditional Chinese cultural business model, which has won the unanimous approval of the residents.

Location entropy is widely used to measure the degree of the regional clustering of industries. It is also a common method for measuring the scale of the industrial layouts and the level of industrialization. This study adopted the location entropy index to measure the clustering degree of tourism enterprises, which can reflect the development level of regional tourism in Xiaofeng Town and the staged and spatial evolution of regional destinations. Considering data availability, the index can be defined as:

Q_{i} = \frac{d_{i} / \sum_{i = 1}^{n} d_{i}}{D_{i} / \sum_{i = 1}^{n} D_{i}}

where

d_{i}

is the index of Xiaofeng regional tourism and cultural enterprises department development,

D_{i}

is the same index of the upper level regional department in Anji County, and n is the number of enterprises.The number of enterprises with 10 or more employees at the end of each year was used to make the inter-annual enterprise stock of town-level units comparable. The first and second column of Table 6 show the number of tourism cultural enterprises (including theme amusement parks, characteristic B & Bs, leisure vacations, sightseeing tours, hotels and resorts, and scenic spots.) in Anji County and Xiaofeng Town from 2016 to 2020.

The cumulative number of tourism, culture and entertainment enterprises from 2016 to 2020 in Xiaofeng Town and Anji County is shown in the first and second columns, respectively. The third column shows the cumulative statistical number of Anji tourism enterprises in each year. After calculation, the ratios for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 are 10.4%, 12.3%, 12.8%, 13.7%, and 13.4% respectively. This shows that the growth in the employment in Xiaofeng Town was driven by an increased number of tourism and cultural enterprises. This result relates to the regional agglomeration of the tourism industry. With more job opportunities, residents have easier access to local jobs. At the same time, they also support corporate culture for value identification. Cultural construction is an essential process in enterprise management and the guarantee of cultural inheritance.

The industrial chain of tourism cultural industry can be divided into six categories: catering, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, shopping and entertainment. Residents can be engaged in tourism and cultural enterprises in the following ways. The first way is to be self-employed entrepreneurs of rural hotels, tour souvenir stores, and restaurants. The second involves sanitation workers, security guards, repair people, receptionists, and salespersons in tourism enterprises (Table 7). With the further development of the tourism industry which includes the above six categories, some new jobs such as product image-makers, activity designers, product promoters, self-media producers, and handicraft workers are emerging.

Table 7.

Types of jobs in tourism and cultural enterprises in Xiaofeng.

Industry	Very easy	Easy	Difficult	Needs professional staff and comprehensiveness
Post
Degree	More increased			Slightly increased
Scenic spots	Sanitary worker, security guard,	Ticket seller	Operation and maintenance man	Guide, greening workers, advertisement, copywriter, computer operator	Basic management post
Catering		Cashier	Purchaser, bartender	Cook, waiter, etc.	Basic and middle management post
Accommodation (hotel, B & B, guest house)	Repair people, room attendant, bellman	Receptionist, reception staff	Operation and maintenance personnel, security guard	accounting stall, housekeeper, salesperson, promoter, image-maker,culture attache	Basic and middle management post
Transportation and sightseeing	Cleaner, repair people	Ticket seller, security guard,	Maintenance personnel, administrator staff	storage battery car driver, sightseeing bus driver, cable car security staff etc.	Basic and middle management post
Recreation and entertainment	Cleaner, repair people	Ticket seller	director of information service, maintenance personnel, security guard, storage battery car driver	Host, actor, assistant customer executive, makeup artist, self-media producer etc.
Shopping (souvenir and handcraft production etc.)	Cleaner, security guard	Promoter, tallyman	Salesperson, chief tallyman	Product designer, handcraft worker	Basic management post

Source: The data are from the statistics of the Department for Work and Pension.

The competitiveness of rural tourism should be enhanced by measures such as constructing a tourism culture IP and paying attention to consumers’ cultural preferences and needs. Villages should explore local cultural elements to integrate with rural tourism resources and bring vitality to rural tourism, protect and activate the national traditional folk culture (Barbieri and Mahoney, 2010). IP in tourism culture is a popular tourism development phenomenon. Xiaofeng Town also faces an important opportunity to demonstrate tourism culture creatively.

The local tourism culture has developed a certain influence and spread the word about the town’s tourism image of the whole town to realise cultural industrialisation through a variety of carriers, such as cultural platforms, cultural activities, cultural heritage, cultural custom and cultural scenic spots. The village Dahe built a local representative Park of Bamboo Culture, which integrates nature and culture, fully using the surrounding natural resource and human resource, comprehensively reflecting the long bamboo cultural tradition of local areas and showing the local characteristics and rich cultural connotations.

Cultural image

The cultural preferences of customers should also be considered. It is necessary to develop different digital platforms for cultural transmission, and promote the cultural concepts of tourism products (i.e., Wufeng Mountain Characteristic B & B) and tourism enterprises to the public. As the birthplace of the bamboo forest leisure culture, Xiaofeng Town attaches great importance to the protection and inheritance of leisure culture. With the inflow of foreign cultures and the differences in the individual culture level of tourists, the excellent traditional culture should be deeply rooted in the hearts of every Chinese individual. Local enterprises prominent in the development of leisure industry include: Midsummer·Dream B & B and Junlan Grassland Hotel, which have a distinct image of rural leisure culture. Tourism culture serves the public and has a profoundly positively affects on people’s spiritual and cultural lives.

Another typical image example is the Baiyang Village, south of the Yangtze River. It is a beautiful village with abundant natural resources and geographical advantages. Based on its own economic development, the village introduced the Midsummer·Dream B & B cultural construction project in 2018. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with the project manager to understand the concept of enterprise culture and how tourism culture penetrates into business operations and management activities to observe how culture is integrated with rural scenery, tourism activities and experiences (Figure 5). It is necessary to understand and implement the concept of enterprise spiritual culture and integrate cultural elements into the enterprises’ management and business activities. This increases the image identification and accelerates the development of tourism culture, and the enterprises’ products driven by cultural reshaping will lead the cultural element go into a high interpretation.

Figure 5.

Manifestation of the rural tourism culture of Midsummer·Dream B & B. Sorted by the authors.

The key to inheriting historic culture and artistic value from tourism culture is in creating cultural brands and products’ cultural connotation of tourism enterprises. Xiaofeng has been designed as a demonstration of the aspect of civilisation. For example, cultural auditorium, colourful micro-filial piety, and happy neighbors have made beautiful villages a general trend. Based on ‘Five progammes and 10 completion’, each village deepens the construction of moral and cultural brands, and has created several ‘Golden Cards’ in such activities as ‘Micro-filial piety for every people’, ‘Micro-filial piety at home’ and ‘Micro-filial piety brands’.

The successful application of a series of intangible cultural heritage tourism programmes through e-platforms, such as Dahe Shadow Show Art Museum, Dahe Lion Dance, Li’s Dragon, and Xiaozi Lantern, has enhanced the image of tourism culture. As a provincial intangible cultural heritage, Xiangjia Shadow Show integrates folk art products deeply into tourism enterprises, expands the channel of display and sales, and imbues tourism products with cultural significance.

The formation of the industrial cultural image as the link, various forms of folk cultural activities as the platform, and digital cooperation as the opportunity (Figure 6), it will promote the construction of ‘one brand in one village’ and constantly expand the influence of tourism culture. For example, the cultural image of Xiatang Village is that of a well-known seedling tree village. To accelerate the sustainable development of seedling trees, ‘Jinyi nursery stock’ is used as the village’s tourism industry. The cultural elements of saplings and flowers have promoted the display and sales and become one of its characteristic images, realising the industrialisation of tourism culture. With the completion of the cultural auditorium of village and the lecture hall of traditional Chinese culture, Xiaofeng Town has become a demonstration zone for the higher-quality development of tourism cultural connotation.

Figure 6.

The ways to portray local filial piety culture.

In addition to the official website of ‘Xiaofeng Town’, Xiaofeng Town has an official WeChat account of ‘Yun Yun Feng’. It comprises three modules: news, video and services, through which Wechat users can acquire information about the local customs and practices, and appreciate the beauty and charm of the town. The rural e-commerce digital platform can continuously enhance the use of existing data resources, allowing tourism operators to obtain feedback from tourism consumers through more open channels to understand better and meet consumer preferences and needs and promote the tourism culture dimensions of the countryside.

Discussion

Tourism culture is of the utmost importance for all regions. The previous case analysis showed that the highest consensus on encouraging residents to participate in tourism development. Rural tourism is regarded as a key aspect of township economy and also a beneficial income of residents in other subgroups. Therefore, the authors are particularly interested in the conceptual model of tourism culture sustainability to understand the development of representative villages and residents’ responses o tourism culture development.

In summary, the development of rural tourism culture is related to various factors. In addition to government planning and enterprise attention, the community support, especially that of residents, is an important factor for rural tourism products to ensure the sustainable development of villages, which indicates the development level of rural tourism destination (Lo et al., 2019). According to previous research results, when the number of enterprises within 10 km² reaches 0.10, the region shows a clustering phenomenon. In this study, the number reached 0.16 in 2020 (Table 4), indicating a high degree of agglomeration. The ratio of tourism-related employment to the total employment is over 20% in Xiaofeng, which confirms that its tourism culture has a higher level of development. Therefore, the development of Xiaofeng’s tourism culture fully uses of characteristic local culture and constitutes a driving force for the local tourism economy, stimulating enterprise development, providing employment opportunities, and ultimately promoting characteristic regional economy.

It is worth noting that rural tourism culture development support must be taken seriously and comprehensively. It seems reasonable to consider the spiritual culture reflected by the local traditional culture and the developing trend according to the relationship between cultural development and economic benefits. The Climbing Mountain Festival, for example, has the rich and wide cultural connotations of the Double Ninth Festival. By advocating Xiaofeng Town’s custom of respecting the older adults, it can attract a wider range of tourism consumers. The cultural concept better reflects the product’s attributes on the network platform, and its special cultural connotation in the description of its basic information of the product. Through EDA/MR/XR and live broadcast technology, the internal details and external image of the product are displayed dynamically, highlighting the distinctive characteristics and cultural connotations of the produc to help attract more customers.

Xiaofeng Town highlights the continuous innovation of cultural connotations in importing of enterprises, develops and utilises the local resources and forms a characteristic tourism culture. Groups of representative enterprises with a reshaped culture in Xiaofeng Town, such as Mengfu·Heye Hall, have been thriving. They not only allow tourists to participate in tourism activities, but also to experience farming, embrace rural nature, and immerse themselves in the countryside lifestyle. With a rich culture, they also promote an architectural style integrated with the beauty of the rural environment and enhance the sense of honour of residents. This encourages local people to return to their hometowns and find jobs in local tourism enterprises. Local enterprises are thus able to hire more local workers, which is a win-win situation for both enterprises and residents (Banerjee et al., 2021; Sun et al., 2021).

When residents and tourists understand the spiritual connotations of enterprises, it can lead them to support the development of rural tourism (Stoddart and Graham, 2016). Local governments and enterprises jointly create more cultural jobs for rural tourism. For example, the Black Felt Hat Wine Group has over 450 staff members, forming a tourism culture brand with unique connotations and reflecting the charm of Chinese wine. Among the many developing elements, cultural elements affect the development of local tourism enterprises and the status and honour of local residents. To benefit transform and delight the people, rural tourism culture should instil a greater sense of development prospects, confidence and pride in the local people.

The town promotes its the classic traditional culture through heroic deeds, excavates the historic and cultural resources, protects the existing cultural relics and historic sites, preserves the historical sites, displays the development process of the village and traces the changes of the times, and transforms the historical culture into valuable wealth. To reshape the connotations of local culture and create a highland of cultural image, it is necessary to combine the interpretations of tourism culture with the construction of the upgraded beautiful countryside, excavate the unique cultural elements of each village, and improve the cultural atmosphere of the village and the cultural literacy of the residents.

Rural tourism enterprises should remould and condense the spiritual culture of enterprises based on steady development, undertake more social responsibilities and try to increase customers’ trust during special periods such as the COVID-19 pandemic, so that enterprises can develop at the same pace as the society. Tourism enterprises should adjust their internal product structure, weaken price competition, enter into the development stage of high-quality, personalised, characteristic and customised products, make full use of digital e-commerce modes, and lower the cost of sales and personnel by combining off-line offices and online transactions. Tourism enterprises must utilise and form new clustering business models and cultural cores based on traditional sales and product advantages. To maintain sustainability, Xiaofeng Town has reshaped and transmitted its tourism culture by continuously innovating tourism culture connotation. To display the rural tourism culture effectively via the platform of digitalisation, tourism operators have attached great importance to the design and innovation of tourism culture products.They have integrated the functionalities of culture and fashion into their products to keep pace with the times and further satisfy the modern city tourist and the modern countryside life aesthetic (Lankford, 2001). To improve the effectiveness of enterprise digital platforms in spreading tourism culture, more attention must be paid to tourism cultural innovation.

Conclusions

The sustainable development of tourism enterprises is promoted by reshaping tourism culture and cultural orientation, refining elements, designing image, integrating resources and spreading culture. Xiaofeng Town has found a suitable way to achieve its unique development. With the long-term assistance of local governments, large-scale tourism enterprises have invested in the tourism cultural industry in Xiaofeng Town. With residents’ deeper understanding and support, tourism culture has become an essential part of local economic development and cultural digitisation. This study has examined the level of tourism culture reshaping and employment opportunities driven by enterprises’ emphasis on the culture and development pattern of the typical Chinese countryside. The overall layout of the tourism cultural industry and regional spatial agglomeration in Table 4 shows that the local representative tourism culture is spreading, as shown in Figrue5. This leads to a sustainable and balancing regional development pattern whereby tourism culture can drive the local economy. In 2018, the female employees in tourism culture industry accounted for 36% of the total female employees in Xiaofeng Town. Empirically, rural tourism culture reshaping positively impacts residents’ employment and enriches tourism products, such as the variety of amusement and rich tourism products. This may represent a rural economic transformation.

Tourism enterprises clustering has significantly affected residents’ living standards. The tourism industry and characteristic culture can better explain why prosperous enterprises create more culturally related job opportunities. To facilitate the development of the tourism industry, the enterprises promote themselves by refining spiritual culture and cultural images that meet tourists’ needs. There is a clear link between tourism culture identification and employment, which helps them move towards economic prosperity and sustainable development. Driven by digital transformation and development, Xiaofeng is forming a huge digital market.The scale of the digital economy is expanding accordingly, the customer base and the scope of its sales are also increasing. In this case, enterprises must focus on the cultural value identity of consumers, and make substantial efforts to reconstruct the rural tourism culture and maintain China’s rural characteristics to allow tourists, enterprises, and consumers to cherish the rural development of villages and respect the customs and values of the local people. Xiaofeng has taken the lead in reshaping tourism culture and creating a tourism cultural image. Enterprises and villages with reshaped culture satisfy the needs of modern tourism consumers and allows tourists to experience nature, local customs and lifestyles. Xiaofeng Town thus continues to leading role in cultural digitalisation, rural revitalisation and aesthetic countryside development.

This study is subject to certain limitations. It only analysed the concept of rural tourism culture from the perspective of cultural effects. A more precise quantitative study should further examine the relationship between cultural identification and sustainable development. This will be necessary to build a logic algorithm for perceiving future cultural outcomes.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - How “cultural reshaping” affects rural tourism development in China - a case from zhejiang beautiful countryside demonstration area

Supplemental Material for How“cultural reshaping”affects rural tourism development in China - a case from zhejiang beautiful countryside demonstration area by Lidi Xu and Yunjian Yu in Tourism and Hospitality Research

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - How “cultural reshaping” affects rural tourism development in China - a case from zhejiang beautiful countryside demonstration area

Supplemental Material for How “cultural reshaping” affects rural tourism development in China - a case from zhejiang beautiful countryside demonstration area by Lidi Xu and Yunjian Yu in Tourism and Hospitality Research

Footnotes

Authors contribution

Conceptualization: Lidi Xu, Yunjian Yu

Data curation: Yunjian Yu

Formal analysis: Lidi Xu, Yunjian Yu

Methodology: Lidi Xu, Yunjian Yu

Resource: Lidi Xu

Writing-original draft: Yunjian Yu

Writing-review editing: Lidi Xu

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province in the form of a grant awarded to Lidi Xu (No19NDJC405YBM).

Data availability

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

ORCID iD

Lidi Xu

Author biographies

Lidi Xu (1979), female, is associate professor of School of Tourism Management, Hangzhou Polytechnic, China. From 2003 to 2006, she studied at Shenyang Normal University and received her master degree in Tourism and Hospitality Management. She has fulfilled over 10 research projects and published over 20 academic papers as well as two books. Her research interests includes rural tourism, tourism culture and tourist behavior. Email: smartcutestudent@sina.com

Yunjian Yu (1977), male, is teacher of School of Tourism management, Hangzhou Polytechnic, China. From 2016 to 2018, he studied at Jiangxi Normal University and received his master degree in Management. His research interests includes business Economy, tourism business management. Email: yuyunjian001@163.com

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