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| STUDY ON VISITOR ATTRACTION COMPETITIVENESS BASED ON PLACEATTACHMENT THEORY |
| LI Jiu-quan, WANG Li |
| Human Geography Institute, Xi'an International Studies University, Xi'an 710128, China |
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Abstract Because of rapid development of China tourism during the recent 30 years, the competition among the same and different level of visitor attractions becomes more and more intense. On this background, it becomes an important topic of tourism science that how the visitor attractions enhance their competitiveness. National Tourism Administration of China proclaim the list of 5A level of visitor attractions which was firstly confirmed in May, 2007. So, the tourism development has to highly focus on visitor attractions as well as visitor attraction competitiveness.
With the viewpoint of place attachment, using the research methodology of micro-cognitive theory of humanism, the authors explore the key idea of composition factors of visitor attraction competitiveness. This idea embodies the benefits of local residents and tourists' demand, based on tourism perception and attitude of local residents as well as tourists experiences, and focuse on visitor attraction competitiveness due to influence on "social-cultural turn" thought since 1970s.
The paper puts forward composition factors of visitor attraction competitiveness, explains the underlying relations and correlation mechanism between tourism image and tourism place, place attachment and visitor attraction competitiveness and constructs index system of competitiveness of visitor attractions. What's more, it discusses the decision and policies of visitor attraction development are made by local governments who seldom consider residents' benefits as well as tourists' perception and demand. While, in fact, it's just core of visitor attraction development and management, in particular, the visitor attraction competitiveness origins from such two important aspects.
The paper has drawn several conclusions: 1)Visitor attraction competitiveness must center on tourists and local residents, as well as correlation between both in the present background of social economy development. It solves the problems of where and how to guide visitor attraction development, which have a great significance in promoting visitor attraction's development fast and healthily. 2)Place attachment theory, as an important topic in modern human geography, catches much attention in the correlation between human -beings and natural and social cultural environment, proffers a new viewpoint of visitor attraction competitiveness research. 3)The perception and attitude of local residents, and tourists experiences perception are core aspects of visitor attraction competitiveness based on place attachment theory. 4)The sample survey and interview with tourists and residents is the main methodology on measurement of visitor attraction competitive-ness.
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Received: 26 March 2007
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2008, Vol. 23 
