Tourism and conserving intangible cultural heritage: Residents’ perspectives on protecting the nüshu female script

ABSTRACT

Combining intangible cultural heritage (ICH) with tourism is one way of protecting living culture, and community residents have long been the most important stakeholders in these efforts. This paper explores the relationship between residents’ role in heritage conservation and heritage tourism and determines a means of protecting ICH by introducing a Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model and data from a survey and field interviews in Jiangyong, China. The results show that inhabitants’ behavioral attitudes, subjective norms and perceptual behavior control for conserving Nüshu (an ancient and unique women’s written language) have a significant impact on intentions to protect this ICH. The external pressure of subjective norms is more important than any other factor. The sustainable development of tourism and the protection of ICH are complementary, and community involvement is critical for sustaining ICH and developing heritage tourism. Finally, the study highlights several managerial implications.

摘 要

将 非物质文化遗产与旅游相结合是保护生活文化的一种方式, 而社区居民长期以来一直是这些努力的最重要的利益相关者。文章以中国江永女书非物质文化遗产社区居民问卷调查和实地访谈为研究数据, 应用计划行为理论(TPB) 模型探讨了社区居民在遗产保护和遗产旅游中的作用, 并明确了保护非遗文化遗产的方法。结果表明, 社区居民对保护女书 (一种古老而独特的女性文字) 的行为态度、主观规范和感知行为控制对保护这一非物质文化遗产的意愿有显著影响, 主观规范的外部压力比其他任何因素都重要。旅游业的可持续发展与非物质文化遗产的保护是相辅相成的, 社区参与对于非物质文化遗产的持续发展和遗产旅游的发展至关重要。最后, 该研究强调了几个管理启示。

KEYWORDS:

• Intangible heritage
• empowerment
• community-based tourism
• nüshu
• gendered heritage

关键词:

• 非物质遗产
• 授权
• 社区旅游
• 女书
• 性别遗产

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hunan Philosophy and Social Science Fund (湖南省哲学社科基金年度项目罗文斌, 2017) [17YBX013] and Hunan Province Natural Science Foundation (湖南省自然科学基金面上项目, 罗文斌, 2021) [2021JJ30449].

Notes on contributors

Wenbin Luo

Wenbin Luo is Associate Professor in College of Tourism, Hunan Normal University, PR China. His research interests cover sustainable tourism and community participation, land use and tourism development (E-mail: [email protected]).

Yulian Lu

Yulian Lu is Lecturer in the School of Geographic Sciences and Tourism, Zhaotong University, PR China. Her research interests are sustainable tourism and tourism geography (E-mail: [email protected]).

Dallen J. Timothy

Dallen J. Timothy is Professor in the School of Community Resources and Development, Arizona State University, USA; Furong Professor in the College of Tourism, Hunan Normal University, China; and Senior Research Associate, at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa (E-mail: [email protected]).

Xiaolin Zang

Xiaolin Zang is Associate Professor of Qingdao University of Technology, PR China. She got her doctor degree in Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands. Her research interests are heritage conservation and community participation (E-mail: [email protected]).