THE INVOLUTION AND DE-INVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY TOURISM: CASE STUDY ON YUNTAI MOUNTAIN
LIANG Zeng-xian1,2, SU Si-qing1, BAO Ji-gang1,2
1. School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China; 2. Key Laboratory of the Sustainable Development of Xinjiang's Historical and Cultural Tourism, Urumqi 830046, China
Abstract China's peasant economy has been the longest lasting and largest in the world, also its most highly "involuted" economic system which makes rural community tourism of China different. This study addresses the stagnation and void development of rural community tourism and introduces the theory of involution to the analysis on the rural community development. Using five communities (Anshang, Gudongyao, Wujiatai, Chapengzhang, and Heishiling) with defined boundaries within China's Yuntai Mountain area as case, this study conducts a longitudinal case study to explore the process and mechanism of involution and deinvolution of rural community tourism. The involution of rural community tourism refers to a certain stage or condition of community tourism development where tourism development is stagnating or unable to transform and upgrade to a new form, repetition in quantity but less evolution in quality. Under the circumstances, the community become more complicated and homogeneous, and the marginal returns of the whole community decline as the increase community tourism, the increase of tourism is unable to adapt to new market demand finally. This case study identified that in the past decades, the five Yuntai communities have gone through four phases of (de-) involution, including involution in agriculture, de-involution in agriculture through developing tourism, involution in community tourism, and de-involution in community tourism.
LIANG Zeng-xian,SU Si-qing,BAO Ji-gang. THE INVOLUTION AND DE-INVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY TOURISM: CASE STUDY ON YUNTAI MOUNTAIN[J]. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, 2023, 38(5): 154-161.
