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| STUDY ON SELF-DRIVING TOURS IN CHINA AND TOURISM GENTRIFICATION |
| FENG Shu-hua1,2, SHA Run1 |
1. College of Geography Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210097, China;
2. Tourism Department, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China |
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Abstract In recent years, self-driving tour rapidly expands and is forming a new kind of tourism. And the research on self-driving is becoming a hot topic among academics, showing that the self-driving tourists have distinctive features of middle class, such as higher income, better living condition, higher education, greater awareness of travel and tourism literacy. Analyzing the tourism gentrification process, role and type of self-driving from the perspective of gentrification theory, the paper holds that tourism gentrification is not confined to the neighbourhood where the middle class groups live in. The gentrification movement may be brought about in the tourism destination and the traveling region system changed through the traveling activity of middle class tourists; hence the extenstion and richness of the concept of tourism gentrification in substance. The tourism gentrification means the change of supply system in traveling reception place through the tourist consumers' behavior of the middle class groups in the spatial shape and social culture atmosphere, causing the local community to become a relatively wealthy and appropriate region. Self-driving tourists in China have these obvious gentrification characteristics in all respects, which also have great impacts on the traveling destination. The empirical research shows that the self-driving tourist consumers' space displays the concentric circle-shaped to the city as the center. Their travel preferences gradually reduce from the centre to the external while the self-driving tourism gentrification effects gradually decline from the center to the edge. The gentrification effect of the self-driving tourism in China mainly has four aspects, such as the scenic spot effect in the traveling destination, the residential tourism industry effect, the traveling shopping effect and the tour information system effect. According to the gentrification effect in the different traveling type places, the type of self-driving tourism gentrification can be divided into the resort area type, the village traveling type and the warm cold scenic area type.
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Received: 29 October 2007
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2009, Vol. 24 
