Abstract In recent years, as more and more investors engage in the exploitation of tourism resources, the relationship between the destination's residents and investors and government becomes more and more complicated. The residents' benefits are always ignored in the tourism development and thus the contradictions and problem between them are inevitable. In the new round of the tourism resources exploitation, how to attach more considerations to the destination's residents' benefits, so as to guarantee the sustainable development of regional tourism industry, has become very urgent.
For establishing a suitable mechanism system to help destination's residents involve in the regional. tourism development, a hierarchy of residents' involvement in the regional tourism development is proposed. In this hierarchy, the destination's residents involve in the regional tourism development in three different levels. They are primary level, improved level and advanced level. In each level, there are different contents, modes and characteristics of involvement. In primary level, the residents involve in the tourism spontaneously and the main concern is given to the economical benefit. In improved level, the involving mode become standard, but the main concern is still economical benefit. Differently, in advanced level, the residents involve in the tourism industry self-consciously and they take the whole community's benefits as their attention, including social benefit, economical benefit, and ecological benefit.
Finally, the establishment of a mechanism system for promoting the residents' involvement in the regional tourism is attempted. Four different mechanisms are included in this system, they are fair property rights dealing mechanism, equivalent talk mechanism, effective education and training mechanism and residents-oriented benefit allocation mechanism. The above four mechanisms are correlative. The last one, that is residents-oriented benefit allocation mechanism, is the ultimate goal and target mechanism. By this mechanism system, the authors intend to improve the degree of residents' involvement in the regional tourism development and thus achieve the sustainable tourism development.
2004, Vol. 19 
