Distributive Justice Issues in Community-Based Tourism

Conventional tourism and its attendant challenges for nature and communities have necessitated the need for tourism to be more sustainable, equitable, and responsible, hence the introduction of community-based tourism (CBT). CBT was developed as a model and a viable instrument for poverty reduction, offering opportunities for conservation and rural economic development. However, despite the potential of CBT to generate welfare for communities, many initiatives have failed to deliver on their promises. Since tourism and justice issues cannot be separated from each other, concerns over the discussion of justice related issues have emerged as a community concept which requires critical investigation. This chapter presents a theoretical exploration of how justice is conceptualized, with an emphasis on distributive justice in the context of CBT, and how it is shaping the production of CBT. It also explores some critical approaches to tourism studies and practice and how justice for local communities is conceptualized in CBT contexts.

DOMESTIC TOURIST SATISFACTION: IMPLICATIONS FOR “ONE COMMUNE ONE PRODUCT” ECO-TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN THE MEKONG DELTA OF VIETNAM

Eco-tourism being one of six groups of OCOP products plays a key role in the rural economic development. However, there are limited empirical evidences on the impacts of destination attributes of OCOP tourism on tourist satisfaction. Thus, the objective of this current study is to investigate the impacts of OCOP eco-tourism destination attributes on tourist satisfaction. The study conducted face-to-face interviews with 200 eco-tourists and employed exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression. The study found that the shared social and environmental responsibilities - core characteristics of OCOP tourism have the highest effect on tourist satisfaction. The study also provides some policy implications for sustainable development of OCOP eco-tourism destinations in the Mekong Delta.

The Effect of Rural Development on Poverty Gap, Poverty Severity and Local Economic Growth in Indonesia

The effect of rural development in reducing the poverty gap and economic growth has not been much analyzed in recent studies. This study examines the effects of rural development (as calculated by using the Village Development Index, VDI) on poverty and economic growth. Precisely, poverty is measured by the depth of poverty (as measured by Poverty Gap Index, P1) and poverty severity (as measured by Poverty Severity Index, P2) using the aggregate data at the district level in Indonesia. Understandably, many factors influence the effort to reduce the poverty gap in rural areas, and it can be started by improving rural economic development. The result of this study indicates that regions with the VDI categorized as “self-sufficient” and “developed” villages have the potential to reduce the depth of poverty and poverty severity in its areas and to increase economic growth. In contrast, underdeveloped and very underdeveloped regions in their VDI category experienced a more significant gap in the depth and severity of the poverty. This result implies that the Indonesian government must accelerate and improve the development of rural areas, especially in less developed regions. Thus, a better rural development status will attract more opportunities to grow rural economic activities and improve the community welfare.

Application of Multiobjective Particle Swarm Optimization in Rural Credit System

In China’s rural credit system, the problem of credit constraints is prominent. Due to the imperfect credit market, a large number of rural residents have credit constraints. Rural credit constraint is a serious problem restricting China’s rural economic development. Aimed at solving the rural credit constraints, this paper makes an optimization analysis on the rural credit system and loan decision-making. To more reasonably evaluate customers’ borrowing ability, the credit risk based on farmers’ data on the big data platform is evaluated in this paper. The stacked denoising autoencoder network is improved by adopting the deep learning framework to improve the accuracy of credit evaluation. For improving the loan decision-making ability of rural credit system, a loan optimization strategy based on multiobjective particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed. The simulation results show that the optimization ability, speed, and stability of the proposed algorithm have achieved good results in dealing with the loan portfolio decision-making problem.

Homestead reduction, economic agglomeration and rural economic development: evidence from Shanghai, China

PurposeThe contradiction of construction land in economically developed regions is becoming more prominent, and the scale of construction land in some large cities is close to the ceiling. Therefore, China implemented the policy of construction land reduction in 2014. The main objective is to optimize the stock of homesteads and then help to realize rural revitalization by transferring land indexes across regions. Shanghai took the lead in implementing the reduction policy in 2014, for which reduction acceptance data are available. Thus, this paper evaluates the impact of homestead reduction on rural economic development based on data from towns in Shanghai.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses the difference-in-difference (DID) model to analyze the policy effects of homestead reduction on rural residents' income and industrial integration development. Using economic agglomeration (EA) as a mediating variable, the authors explore how homestead reduction (HR) promotes EA to drive rural economic development and analyze the impact of geographic location and government investment.FindingsHR significantly promotes rural economic development and shows a significant cumulative effect. In the long run, HR can improve rural residents' income and promote industrial integration by promoting EA. The positive effect of HR and EA in suburban regions on industrial integration development is gradually increasing. However, the incentive effect on rural residents' income is weakening. The positive mediating effect of EA is significantly higher in regions with low government investment than in regions with high government investment.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to testing the impact of HR policy on rural economic development and can provide a reference for other regions aiming to implement reduction policy.

Regional Spatial Approach to Differences in Rural Economic Development: Insights from Serbia

Rural regions with a larger share of the primary sector in the overall economy are limited in their ability to achieve a sufficient level of competitiveness. In countries such as Serbia, where rural areas play an important role, addressing the problems affecting these areas is important for overall development. The purpose of this study is to determine the socioeconomic performance of the rural regions of Serbia and the EU in order to indicate the position of Serbia’s rural areas in the process of European integration. NUTS 3 (NUTS 2 for Germany) was used for analysis, and from this an Index of Socioeconomic Performance was created. This Index was created using Factor Analysis. The results point to Serbia lagging behind other EU regions in terms of development, with most of Serbia’s rural regions receiving the lowest ratings. These results are cause for alarm and indicate a need to create strategies that will direct resources towards key issues in these areas, whose potential would be adequately used through the implementation of rural policy measures, with the aim of overall socioeconomic development.

Intelligent Rural Tourism Environmental Suitability Evaluation System Based on a Wireless Sensor Network

After years of vigorous development, the scale of rural tourism industry has gradually expanded throughout the country, and it has become an important means of coordinating urban and rural areas to drive farmers’ incomes and get rich. Nowadays, the level of informatization is constantly improving, the construction of smart cities is constantly advancing, the personalized demand of tourists is increasingly strong, especially the rural tourist spots scattered in the vast countryside which have a great spatial breadth, and the traditional management method can no longer meet the needs of the source objects whose main travel mode is self-driving. Therefore, only when rural tourism develops in the direction of intelligence can it successfully realize the transformation and upgrading of rural tourism industry. This paper takes a rural tourism resort in a certain area as the research object and builds an intelligent rural tourism environmental suitability evaluation system with three criterion levels: natural geographic conditions, traffic environmental conditions, and tourism spatial conditions. The weight of each indicator layer is obtained through the analytic hierarchy process, and the reclassified raster data of indicators is weighted and superimposed on the ArcGIS operating platform to obtain the evaluation result of the environmental suitability of smart rural tourism. According to the results of suitability evaluation, the most suitable area is selected as the potential area of the intelligent rural tourism environment in a certain area. According to the natural and cultural tourism resource conditions in the block, the potential block is divided into functions. A comprehensive comparison of the suitability spatial differentiation map of the smart rural tourism environment in a certain area with the suitability spatial differentiation map of each subsystem can more clearly find that the suitability score of the economic development subsystem and the basic support subsystem is a county-level village in a certain area. Among them, the suitability of the rural economic development subsystem is similar to the distribution of the suitability of the smart rural tourism environment in a certain area; that is, it is positively correlated with the suitability of the smart rural tourism environment. Therefore, improving the level of rural economic development and increasing investment in the construction of a smart rural tourism environment play an important role in improving the level of public services and infrastructure coverage.

Assessing the Potential for Sustainable Aquaculture Development in Cambodia

Inland capture fisheries are central to livelihoods and food security in Cambodia, but are under threat from growing anthropogenic pressures. Policy discourse in Cambodia increasingly frames aquaculture as a viable alternative to capture fisheries, and seeks to promote its development. This paper presents results from the first comprehensive survey of Cambodia's aquaculture value chain. The study combines qualitative (46 Key Informant Interviews) and quantitative surveys (1,204 farmers and 191 other aquaculture value chain actors) to investigate potential for aquaculture in Cambodia to grow, support livelihoods, and contribute to food security. We found the following: (i) The fish farm sector in Cambodia is comprised mainly of small family farms raising carnivorous fish species or pangasius, using direct inputs of “trash fish” harvested from the wild; (ii) Most fish seed and pelleted feed are imported, and domestic producers of these inputs struggle to compete; (iii) Fish farmed in Cambodia is mostly sold live. Farm fish are more expensive than the main species harvested from inland capture fisheries, and struggle to compete with imported farmed fish; (iv) Capture fisheries employ many times more people than aquaculture; (v) Space for aquaculture is limited because few locations have both perennial access to water and protection from flooding. These findings raise questions about the potential of Cambodia's aquaculture sector, as currently organized, to contribute significantly to employment, food and nutrition security, and rural economic development. We propose actions to improve the sector's sustainability and contribute to desirable development outcomes.