Integrating tea and tourism: a sustainable livelihoods approach

Abstract

As an agricultural product with strong social and cultural connotations, the production and consumption of tea have high potential to be integrated with tourism to enhance community livelihood sustainability. A sustainable livelihood approach is used in a tea tourism context in Hetu Town, Anhui Province, China, to examine critically the interactive relationships between tea and tourism. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with management officials, community leaders, tea industry representatives and village residents in four field investigations in 2015 and 2016. Improvement in community livelihood sustainability was identified through enhancement of livelihood diversity and choice. However, impacts on household livelihood sustainability varied as tourism participation is restricted by level of livelihood assets. The increase of the within-community income gap may generate social problems in the long run. The current level of tea and tourism integration is limited. The history, culture and traditions related with tea are not widely disseminated by local tea producers. Opportunities for in-depth and diversified tea tourism experiences are being recognized, which call for partnership with those involved in tourism. Practical implications are discussed to enhance tea and tourism integration, boost local participation, enhance local benefits, and particularly, to engage those with lower levels of livelihood assets.

Keywords:

• Tea
• tourism
• rural community
• sustainable livelihood
• China

Notes

1 As an official Chinese version of rural tourism, Nongjiale has been expanding since its initiation in the 1990s. Being family based, it usually involves rural residents hosting urban visitors in their rural houses, providing food, accommodation and activities with a rural flavour (He, 2005; Park, 2014). To support its contribution to rural development, many policies have been issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China (Formerly Ministry of Agriculture) to support Nongjiale development, including land use and service standardization criteria.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the Research Funds of Renmin University of China (19XNI004) to Dr. Ming Ming Su.