Business characteristics and efficiency of rural tourism enterprises: an empirical study from China

ABSTRACT

The booming rural tourism (RT) has broadened ways for rural revitalization and poverty alleviation strategy in China. Rural tourism enterprises (RTEs), as the core operator and a hinge delivering its benefits to rural communities, play a critical role in the achievement of RT expectation on rural revitalization. To address the research gap in business characteristics and efficiency of RTEs, and make the theoretical contribution to rural business and tourism management, this study collected and analyzed the business data with investors or managers of 60 national-class RTEs in Jiangsu Province, north Yangtze River Delta of China. The results showed that business characteristics of RTEs varied with their property, business strategy, and rural industrial base. Flexible and sustainable business operation and comprehensive regional development have a profound influence on business efficiency that presented multi spatial disparity from inter-regional and intra-regional views, respectively. In addition, the political and practical implications on rural business and RTEs for research and practice were also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural business (RB)
• rural tourism (RT)
• rural tourism enterprises (RTEs)
• economy development model
• operation
• characteristic
• efficiency
• intensive interview
• Jiangsu province
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Note: the data sourcing from Xinhua Net, the report of National Rural Tourism in 2016, 29 October 2016, http://travel.news.cn/2016-10/29/c_1119812087.htm.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 41571139].