Livelihood sustainability in a rural tourism destination - Hetu Town, Anhui Province, China

Chapter 9. Rural Wine and Food Tourism Cluster and Network Development

It is argued that although sustainable development has received widespread acclaim, practical application of the concept has been fraught with difficulties. Furthermore, when adopted and adapted by a single sector such as tourism, further problems arise because many sustainability challenges are inter-sectoral, involving competition for the use of scarce resources among different potential uses. A sustainable livelihoods (SL) approach is advocated as providing a tangible way forward, and an SL framework is presented to guide future research and practice related to sustainability.

A Livelihood Approach to Sustainability

Tourism and related development can lead to the displacement and resettlement of communities, disrupting local livelihood systems, socio-political processes and organizations. However, limited attention has been paid to community resettlement in the tourism context. Taking Yinhuwan village at Mount Sanqingshan World Heritage Site in China as an example, this study examines the results of tourism and resettlement on the livelihoods of this rural community and the extent to which tourism-related livelihood strategies contribute to community livelihood sustainability. A sustainable livelihood framework is adopted to guide the analysis. Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with management officials, community leaders and village residents through three field investigations in 2013. It was found that traditional livelihood methods have been largely replaced by tourism, which has become the primary livelihood strategy for the resettled community. Despite current economic benefits, high dependency on ...

Heritage tourism and livelihood sustainability of a resettled rural community: Mount Sanqingshan World Heritage Site, China

Entrepreneurial innovation plays a significant role in tourism development, especially in communities with limited experience or expertise in tourism. Innovative tourism businesses, often in the small business sector, are likely to be more beneficial to the local community in terms of job creation and economic linkages. Such forms of tourism could offer new forms of livelihood in destination communities, making tourism an effective strategy for livelihood diversification that is more sustainable and community-based. Community-based tourism initiatives can also help form community networks that facilitate involvement of local stakeholders in a more efficient manner. This paper analyses the role of entrepreneurial innovation in facilitating community networks and sustainable livelihoods in tourism. A case study of an eco-heritage tourism resort of Coconut Palms, in the Indian state of Kerala provides an illustration of how entrepreneurial innovation helped form a community network and offer sustainable live...

Community Networks and Sustainable Livelihoods in Tourism: The Role of Entrepreneurial Innovation

In response to increasing pressure on the agriculture sector, the Taiwan government has implemented a number of development projects, many of which focus on agricultural tourism, to help farmers diversify their sources of income. This article, applying a sustainable livelihood (sl) framework, aims to provide an understanding of the effects of pick-your-own (pyo) farms, as one type of agricultural tourism, upon farmers' livelihoods. Preliminary results indicate that the pyo farm programme has encouraged participant farmers to adopt a series of strategies to benefit from the government-led initiatives and that transforming processes (eg government policies, regulations and institutions) have significantly affected farmers' decisions on livelihood strategies. The article shows that the impact of agricultural tourism in Taiwan is highly complex and that assessment of its contribution to farmers' livelihoods cannot be limited to farm-level economic analysis.

Ming-Huang Lee

Papers

Tourism and Sustainable Livelihoods: the case of Taiwan