Abstract
The article reports the results of a mixed methods research study with a sample of 418 respondents in a quantitative study and semistructured interviews with 40 respondents, both sets of respondents residing in the village of Hongcun, Anhui Province, China. The quantitative study involved approximately 43% of the adult village residents. Hongcun is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site that hosts over 500,000 visitors a year, of whom the majority are domestic Chinese. The research was informed not only by past literature relating to the community impacts of tourism but also issues pertaining to place attachment, research paradigms, and the relevancy of past non-Chinese research to the Chinese context. There was evidence that the village still embraces tourism although disquiet existed as to past contractual arrangements made on behalf of the village. It was also found that the quantitative and qualitative data were mutually congruent, although the latter provided insights missing from the former. It is recommended that when past research is replicated in new cultural settings there is a need for a mixed methods approach to be adopted because dependency upon quantitative methods alone may fail to provide important contextual material.
本文报告混合方法研究的结果,其中包括涉及418名受访者的定量研究及40名受访者的半结构访谈。两组受访者都是中国安徽省宏村的居民。参与定量研究的受访者当中,约百分之四十三是成年村民。宏村是联合国教科文组织 (UNESCO) 世界遗产,每年接待游客500,000人次,当中大部分是国内游客。本研究除了参考与旅游对社区的影响相关的文献之外,还参考了与场所依赖 (place attachment) 和研究范例相关的文献,以及探讨过去以中国为研究对象的西方研究的适用性。有迹象显示,虽然宏村仍然接受发展旅游业,但已变为一种以往为村订下的契约安排,情况令人忧虑。另外,本研究发现定量和定性数据协调一致,而后者给予的见解是前者所缺乏的。因此,本文建议在新的文化设置重复过去的研究时,需要采用混合方法以避免因单靠定量方法而遗漏了重要的语境资料。
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the following postgraduate students from Beijing International Studies University for their help in data management and collection: Zhaosha Zou, Chunxia Tian, Fangli Qi, and Bo Wang. The authors also appreciate the comments made by Jing (Jane) Hsai and Yerong (Scarlett) He of the School of Tourism, University of Huangshan; Associate Professor Xiaoming Cui from Ankang University; and Jingjing Yang, University of Waikato. Grants from the School of Tourism Management, Beijing International Studies University, and the University of Waikato Management School are hereby acknowledged. Both authors contributed equally and the name order is alphabetic.