Search Results (1,242)

Agritourism has emerged as an increasingly important strategy for rural diversification and multifunctional agricultural development, particularly in transition economies characterized by fragmented farm structures, limited rural investment capacity, and growing tourism demand. Despite the expansion of agricultural support schemes aimed at promoting rural diversification, empirical evidence on their effectiveness in supporting agritourism development at the farm level remains limited, especially in Southeast European contexts. Against this background, the study addresses the following research question: To what extent have agricultural support schemes contributed to agritourism development, rural diversification, and rural resilience in Albania, and what factors constrain their long-term effectiveness? To answer this question, the study examines the role of agricultural support schemes in shaping agritourism development in Albania, with particular emphasis on farm diversification, rural resilience, and implementation constraints. The study adopts a mixed-methods case study approach, combining secondary policy and statistical analysis with primary field research. The fieldwork involved 60 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with agritourism farm owners across the regions of Korçë, Berat, Vlorë, Shkodër, and Lezhë, conducted during September–October 2025. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis to assess investment patterns, perceived socio-economic impacts, and institutional barriers associated with agricultural support schemes. The results show that agricultural support schemes primarily function as catalysts for investment and diversification rather than stand-alone drivers of sustainable rural transformation. However, persistent structural constraints were identified, including administrative complexity, limited marketing capacity, infrastructure deficiencies, and a strong dependence on seasonal tourism demand. These factors reduce the long-term sustainability and scalability of agritourism enterprises. The paper contributes to the literature on agritourism and rural development by providing empirical evidence from the context of a transition economy and demonstrating that financial support alone is insufficient to ensure sustainable rural transformation. Full article

Fragmented point-based conservation limits the integrated protection and adaptive reuse of timber arch covered bridges. This study develops a quantitative decision-support workflow for identifying and evaluating heritage corridor networks, using 99 timber arch covered bridges in Northeastern Fujian, China, as the regional sample and three representative bridges for bridge-scale interpretation. The workflow combines spatial pattern analysis, Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) suitability modeling, XGBoost–SHAP-assisted resistance analysis, circuit theory corridor extraction, complex network analysis, and maturity assessment. The results show that the bridges form a significant clustered pattern with a Shouning primary core and a Pingnan secondary core. MaxEnt identified high-suitability areas of 1.857 × 10⁵ ha, accounting for 3.65% of the study area, mainly in the Shouning–Pingnan–Zhenghe border zone. The XGBoost–SHAP procedure was used as a secondary modeling step to translate suitability patterns into a composite resistance surface; it indicated that road proximity, elevation, nighttime light intensity, and distance to points of interest (POIs) were the main variables shaping the model output. Based on 27 selected heritage source sites, 75 primary corridors totaling 4078.22 km were identified, together with 33 pinch points and 27 barrier points. A corridor protection width of 7 km was determined as optimal. Network analysis identified Luanfeng Bridge, Longtan Bridge, and Denglong Bridge as important structural nodes and divided all 99 bridges into five river basin-related communities. Maturity assessment revealed a pattern of “one core, two belts, and multiple nodes” but also considerable functional disparity. The three representative cases are reframed as preliminary interpretations of model results: Luanfeng Bridge emphasizes landscape-integrity and visitor-pressure assessment, Denglong Bridge emphasizes route continuity and low-intervention interpretation, and Qiancheng Bridge emphasizes livelihood coordination and incremental rural tourism. This study provides decision-making support for advancing the integrated conservation of timber arch covered bridges and the synergistic development of rural tourism. Full article

Based on county-level panel data from 2010 to 2023 covering 1991 counties, this study employs an Staggered Difference-in-Differences (DID) model integrated with double/debiased machine learning (DDML) and causal inference techniques. The objective of this paper is to assess whether and how the overlapping implementation of cultural-tourism integration (CTP) policies and the county-level National Ecological Civilization Pilot Zone (NECPZ) policy generates synergistic effects on rural residents’ income. The findings reveal that the policy overlap significantly promote farmers’ income. The synergy test shows that the synergy of these policies amplifies the effect of each individual policy and generates a “1 + 1 > 2” synergy effect. Mechanism analysis indicates that the policy overlap facilitates farmers’ income growth by enhancing the appeal and the development of the local tourism market. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the income-enhancing effect is more pronounced in counties with better public cultural services, stronger primary-level governance, and more advanced digital infrastructure. Furthermore, GDP growth rate, agricultural mechanization, and the industrial structure exert a nonlinear moderating effect on the policy effects. Based on these findings, the study proposes breaking down departmental and hierarchical barriers and building institutional synergy to transform ecological resources into economic value. According to local conditions, pilot projects should be prioritized in counties with stronger foundations, while guarding against the risk of diminishing marginal returns from excessive investment, so as to maximize policy synergies and promote fiscal efficiency. Full article

Agritourism is increasingly intersecting with digital technologies to foster rural resilience, economic growth, and sustainable development. This study conducts a comprehensive systematic bibliometric review to map the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and collaborative networks characterizing the digitalization of agritourism from 2010 to 2025. Guided by the PRISMA framework, data from the Scopus database were analyzed using scientific mapping techniques, including keyword co-occurrence, thematic evolution tracking, and spatial collaboration analysis. The findings reveal a paradigm shift categorized into three evolutionary phases: an incubation period of basic web adoption (2011–2017), a disruptive phase catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic (2018–2022), and an exponential maturation phase driven by Industry 4.0 technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and Virtual Reality (2023–2025). Four primary thematic clusters emerged: digital marketing and connectivity, smart tourism and advanced analytics, immersive technologies for heritage preservation, and macro-level sustainability policies. Geopolitically, research is driven by two distinct networks: an Asian-centric hub led by China focusing on state-sponsored smart villages, and a Western hub anchored by the USA and Italy emphasizing entrepreneurial diversification. The study concludes that digitalization has transitioned from a reactive survival mechanism to a proactive strategic necessity. It highlights the critical need to bridge the digital divide through human capital investment and provides a future research agenda focusing on the ethical application of AI, the circular economy, and the preservation of rural authenticity in emerging ’phygital’ environments. Full article

As one of the key vehicles to integrating culture and tourism in urban and rural development, cultural tourism-oriented characteristic towns are increasingly facing natural and social disaster risks caused by global climate variability, large-scale expansion of town areas, and intensified human engineering activities. In particular, characteristic towns that have rapidly developed through tourism based on historical and cultural heritage face challenges such as compact layouts of ancient architectural complexes, extensive outward expansion of newly developed areas, and inadequately planned emergency evacuation systems—making them ill-equipped to cope with increasingly uncertain disaster risks. In response to these issues, this study takes Zhangguying Town in Yueyang County, Hunan Province, as a case study. Through field investigations, interviews, and GIS-based hydrological simulations, the research systematically identifies the characteristics and influencing factors of disaster risks in the town. It also reveals the core dilemmas confronting current disaster prevention planning and proposes strategies such as enhancing chain disaster prevention measures, promoting micro-scale, site-specific disaster prevention retrofitting, and establishing a multi-scale disaster prevention system through “point-line” linkages. By reducing disaster risks, preserving cultural heritage, and optimizing emergency response capacities, this research effectively supports the sustainable development of cultural tourism-oriented characteristic towns from a disaster prevention perspective, enabling these towns to withstand natural hazards while sustaining their historical, cultural, and socio-economic functions. The findings provide a theoretical basis and methodological reference for comprehensive disaster prevention planning in similar cultural tourism-oriented characteristic towns. Full article

The phenomenon of abandoned villages in peripheral and isolated areas constitutes a critical socio-economic and territorial sustainability challenge. Despite its relevance within debates on rural resilience and sustainable development, there remains a lack of systematic research examining how tourism can contribute to the regeneration of these fragile contexts. Grounded in the experience economy paradigm, this article investigates how diverse tourism experiences—co-created through interactions between visitors and local communities—can foster sustainable place-based development. Specifically, the study adopts a two-dimensional analytical framework that classifies tourism experiences according to: (1) the level of local community engagement, and (2) the degree of demographic decline and territorial marginalization of the destination. This framework enables the identification and critical assessment of distinct typologies of tourism experiences in relation to their potential to support social, economic, and cultural sustainability. Through a comparative analysis of selected evidence in Southern Italy, the study highlights how community-based and sustainable tourism initiatives can produce differentiated outcomes in addressing rural depopulation, enhancing local resilience, and promoting the sustainable revitalization of abandoned settlements. Full article

Rapid urbanization and the urban-rural dualism are subjecting traditional villages to various slow-onset disturbances. The resilience of traditional villages (RTV) has become essential for their sustainable development. By measuring, classifying, and zoning RTV, this study aims to reveal its actual state and heterogeneous characteristics, thereby offering clear guidance for differentiated sustainable development strategies in traditional villages. From an integrated perspective of the tripartite attributes of traditional villages, this study develops an RTV assessment framework comprising three dimensions: structural persistability (SP) as vernacular heritage, functional adaptability (FA) as rural communities, and industrial transformability (IT) as tourism resources. Using hierarchical clustering, the obstacle degree model, the optimal parameters-based geographical detector, and spatially weighted hierarchical clustering, this study identifies distinct RTV types, along with their statistical distributions, key constraints, and spatial patterns. The main conclusions are as follows. (1) Most traditional villages in Jincheng exhibit low or medium-low levels of resilience. Moreover, the three dimensions of RTV are unevenly developed, with the IT dimension lagging markedly behind the others. (2) The key obstacles to enhancing RTV are the scarcity of high-value heritage resources, insufficient public services, low regional socioeconomic vitality, low public visibility, a scarcity of high-quality tourism assets, inadequate tourism support facilities, and a limited local tourism supply market. (3) Jincheng’s traditional villages cluster into four resilience-based zones, enabling a regional approach to their conservation. Full article

Mountain tourism plays an important role in sustainable rural development; it is closely linked to agrotourism practices, the use of methodological indicators for sustainability assessment, and the adoption of innovative and strategic management approaches. This study compares the key determinants that shape domestic mountain tourism destination choice among residents of Romania and Georgia. Based on 411 questionnaires in Romania and 440 in Georgia, principal component analysis (PCA) was employed, followed by ANOVA and Tukey post hoc tests. Four factors emerged in Romania, namely basic services, cultural activities, adventure tourism, and natural beauty, while in Georgia, these dimensions consolidated into two broader factors: basic services and natural beauty, and cultural and adventure activities. The results highlight differences in how tourists from the two countries structure and prioritize mountain tourism attributes, reflecting specific local contexts. The study contributes to filling the research gap concerning the influence of local particularities on destination choice in mountain areas and provides comparative evidence that destination choice determinants may be structured differently across mountain destinations. Full article

Agritourism farm-stay guesthouses represent a burgeoning sector of rural tourism, wherein locally produced food serves as the primary experiential attraction. This study examines tourist perceptions regarding food quality, sensory characteristics, sustainability awareness, loyalty indicators, and comparative evaluations at three farm-stay guesthouses in Caraș-Severin County, Romania, located at distinct altitudes: lowland (Sacu, 154 m a.s.l.), hill (Văliug, 550 m a.s.l.), and mountain (Cozia, 1130 m a.s.l.). Altitude in this study marks three distinct settings—lowland, hill, mountain—rather than functioning as a tested independent variable. The results show that tourists evaluated all three guesthouses similarly, with no statistically significant differences across zones. The comparative design was a way of asking whether own-farm food quality perceptions hold across different agritourism contexts, not a test of what altitude does to those perceptions. A structured questionnaire (n = 650) was distributed to guests following an informed consent protocol. Four latent constructs were operationalised: food quality (FQ; Cronbach’s α = 0.593), sensory characteristics (SCs; α = 0.596), sustainability perception (SP; α = 0.393), and comparison with non-farm establishments (CF; α = 0.621). Overall gastronomic satisfaction was particularly high (mean = 4.71 ± 0.62 on a 1–5 Likert scale), and the average overall score was 9.44 ± 1.01 out of 10. Multiple regression accounted for 7.5% of the satisfaction variance (R² = 0.075; F(4,643) = 13.09, p < 0.001), with sensory characteristics (β = 0.232, p < 0.001) and sustainability perception (β = 0.088, p = 0.020) serving as significant predictors. Food origin transparency substantially impacted satisfaction (ANOVA: F(3,646) = 4.964, p = 0.002): visitors who received thorough provenance explanations were more satisfied (mean = 4.77) than those who received no information (mean = 4.57). Among the 569 respondents with prior non-farm experience, 85.2% rated farm-stay cuisine as superior to non-farm alternatives overall. Food quality perceptions in these three Caraș-Severin guesthouses are uniformly high regardless of altitude. What separates more satisfied guests from less satisfied ones is not the measurable quality of the product but whether the host explained where it came from. Full article

Digital transformation is increasingly viewed as a strategic driver of operational efficiency, financial performance, and organisational resilience in rural transition economies. Existing research, however, largely assumes homogeneous digitalisation effects across firms while overlooking the structural conditions shaping integration efficiency. This study investigates the threshold relationship between supply chain integration and financial–economic performance using a threshold regression framework. The analysis is based on firm-level data from 80 agricultural, agritourism, and tourism-related firms operating in rural Northern Albania. Methodologically, the study combines Hansen’s threshold estimation with robust OLS and threshold logistic regression models, complemented by exploratory macro-level threshold analysis for Western Balkan economies. The findings reveal significant regime-dependent dynamics. Below the estimated socio-economic integration threshold, supply chain integration generates weak and statistically insignificant effects. Above the threshold, integration mechanisms produce substantially stronger financial and operational outcomes, indicating that digital transformation becomes economically productive primarily under sufficiently integrated organisational conditions. Additional diagnostics further show that highly integrated firms achieve superior coordination efficiency, resource allocation, and financial resilience. The study contributes to the literature by advancing a managerial-financial and coordination-based interpretation of digital transformation and its threshold performance effects in rural transition economies. Full article

Existing studies of China’s overarching ideological framework for national development, “Ecological Civilization”, have focused narrowly on environmental governance; how it reshapes sustainable rural development remains underexplored. This paper pursues two analytically distinct tasks. First, it reconstructs the policy history of how President Xi Jinping’s “Two Mountains” theory was incorporated into the Eco-civilization framework and how Zhejiang Province’s “Green Rural Revival” (GRR) program, as a lived example of Eco-civilization, was elevated as the national template for rural development in 2024. Second, drawing on three cases from a sample of 21 villages in Zhejiang, it identifies three core practices of GRR and conceptualizes it as a post-productivist project: withdrawal from extractivist production, restoration of ecological resources, and development of facilities catering to urban consumption. We argue that GRR has directed rural development in Zhejiang toward a post-productivist transition and question the model’s replicability and sustainability as the central government promotes it nationwide. Full article

Sustainable rural tourism governance in the Global South faces a persistent challenge: enabling genuine community participation in destination management while protecting environmental assets and cultural heritage. This study examines participatory governance practices at Kampung Senyum Homestay, Cibeusi Village, West Java, Indonesia, a community-based tourism (CBT) initiative that has sustained operations for over eight years, despite a 60% failure rate among comparable initiatives. A qualitative case study design was employed, with data collected over six months (November 2022–May 2023) through participant observation (12 days), in-depth interviews with 14 stakeholders, and document analysis. Data were analyzed using Miles et al.’s interactive model and critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal three interrelated participation layers shaping tourism governance outcomes: interpersonal engagement fostering horizontal host–guest relationships (89% of tourists report kinship-based experiences); deliberative governance through musyawarah desa enabling community-led environmental stewardship, including the collective rejection of a proposal to bring 100 tourists monthly to protect waterfall ecosystems; and digital storytelling by youth extending local heritage narratives globally (150 posts, 7.2% engagement rate). The study proposes a ‘layered participation’ model demonstrating that tourism sustainability depends on participatory governance mechanisms that build social trust, integrate traditional ecological knowledge, and balance economic development with environmental conservation and cultural heritage management. The study also critically examines structural inequalities, including gender asymmetries, unequal benefit distribution, and linguistic barriers, that persist within participatory governance structures, offering a contextually grounded governance framework for rural tourism destinations in the Global South. Full article

This study assesses perceived changes associated with the application of a structured co-creation process to the redesign of an authentic rural tourism product by aligning local resources, stakeholder knowledge, and potential users’ expectations. The empirical context is Salinas de Guaranda, Ecuador, where a tourism product was redesigned and evaluated through an applied one-group pretest–posttest design involving a purposive evaluation panel of 28 participants, including tourism stakeholders, local representatives, and potential users with direct knowledge of the product and destination. The assessment covered perceived preference fit, learning opportunities, participation in activities, social interaction potential, memorability, purchase intention, and willingness to share experiences, all measured using five-point Likert scales. The results show statistically significant perceived improvements across all indicators after the redesign, even after applying the Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons (p < 0.00556). The largest increases were observed in satisfaction with interests and preferences (Δ = 1.32; dz = 2.78), purchase intention (Δ = 1.21; dz = 1.32), and learning (Δ = 1.07; dz = 2.83). Significant increases were also found in perceived interaction with the local community (Δ = 0.64), participation in activities (Δ = 0.55), memorability (Δ = 0.82), and willingness to share experiences. These findings suggest that structured co-creation may help strengthen the perceived fit between rural tourism products and user expectations while enhancing the anticipated experiential and relational potential of authentic tourism products, including situated learning, active participation, and social interaction. The article contributes applied pre–post evidence on how participatory tourism design may support more marketable, memorable, and locally grounded rural tourism experiences, while recognizing that the design does not establish definitive causal effects. Full article

This study examines how value is constructed in sustainable rural tourism through the integration of local gastronomy and spatially embedded accommodation. Although sustainability is commonly treated as an evaluative dimension, limited attention has been given to how it is experienced and internalized within tourism contexts. Addressing this gap, the study develops and empirically tests a process-based model in which Local Gastronomic Authenticity initiates a sequential pathway through Spatial Immersion, Perceived Sustainability Value, and Experiential Enrichment, ultimately shaping Behavioral Intention. Data were collected from 3181 respondents with direct rural tourism experience in the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy), within Slow Food-based gastronomic settings and Albergo Diffuso accommodation systems. The findings indicate that value emerges through interconnected stages rather than isolated attributes. Gastronomic authenticity enhances spatial immersion, which strengthens sustainability perception and contributes to experiential enrichment—the strongest predictor of behavioral intention. The results further show that authenticity acquires behavioral relevance through successive stages involving immersion, sustainability perception, and experiential enrichment, without exerting a direct effect on behavior. The study advances a process-oriented understanding of tourism experience formation by explaining how authenticity becomes behaviorally relevant through successive experiential stages and offers practical implications for designing integrated and sustainable rural tourism systems. Full article

Labor and land resources are two key factors of production. The extent of their internalization significantly influences rural resilience. This study evaluates the resilience of different rural business formats by measuring the degree of land resource internalization and the output elasticity of labor. Based on survey data from 47 counties in China, this study analyzes eight types of rural formats using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and bootstrapping methods. The results show that business formats such as Gourmet Catering, Rural Homestay and Camping, Specialty Local Product Sales, and Health and Wellness Tourism have established stable labor input relationships and exhibit characteristics of economic self-sufficiency. In contrast, other formats have only partially established such relationships and demonstrate a lower level of internalization of resource externalities. The finding from this study indicates that enhancing the internalization of land resources and optimizing labor allocation are crucial for strengthening rural resilience. Full article