相对剥夺视角下的乡村旅游地居民不规范行为研究 ——以江西婺源县李坑、思溪为例

居民不规范行为危害性极大,传统相关研究多基于社会交换视角,存在一定局限。相对剥夺理论在研究人们的不规范行为上存在一定优势,但鲜有应用于旅游研究。以社区问题明显的李坑、思溪两村落为例,结合相对剥夺理论对居民不规范行为的成因和形式等进行了定性分析。与传统研究不同,发现居民不规范行为与其对旅游负面影响的纵向感知并无直接关系,而主要与横向剥夺感相关。研究表明,相对剥夺理论或可作为居民旅游态度和行为研究的新视角,并在预防和管控旅游地社区问题方面具有重要现实意义。

A Relative Deprivation Analysis on the Host Resistance Towards Tourism in Rural Destinations: Case from Wuyuan,China

In recent years, China's rural tourism has developed rapidly, but in the meanwhile many rural destinations have experienced some serious social conflicts in a way that host residents have heavily resisted tourism development to the extent that such development is hampered or even stopped. It is thus deemed important to examine the antecedents of resistance by host community towards tourism development. Currently, the studies on residents' negative behavior have predominantly employed the theoretical framework of social exchange theory, which has a few evident limitations. There have been thus increasing calls for new theories that can offer a new and complementary understanding of host resistance. In response to such appeal, this study introduces relative deprivation theory-a classic social psychology theory which has been argued to have certain advantages in examining people's deviant and resisting behavior but has rarely documented in tourism literature - to investigate the causes and ways in which host community develops negative attitudes towards and thus resist tourism development. The conceptual framework of relative deprivation theory-the latitudinal, longitudinal, and value-based comparison as well as the distinction between individual relative deprivation and group relative deprivation-was presented and discussed as it relates to tourism research. A necessity of empirical research verifying the distinctiveness of the theory in studying the social issues associated with the uneven development in destination communities was noticed. An empirical study was thus conducted on Wuyuan, a famous rural destination of China, which has experienced a rapid development of tourism but serious social conflicts in the past decades. Specifically, Likeng and Sixi were selected as case villages given their well-recognized reputation in terms of tourism development and their critical situation of community issues. With the guidance of the theoretical framework of relative deprivation theory, a qualitative analysis was performed to examine the causes and forms of residents’ negative tourism behaviors on the basis of in-depth interviews, field observations and document analysis. Different from the traditional research findings based on social exchange theory, this study notes that the negative behavior of residents in Likeng and Sixi has no explicit relation to the longitudinal perception of the negative impacts of tourism, but mainly relevant to the latitudinal deprivation caused by tourism development. Value-based deprivation was reported by a few interviewees but has no explicit relation to residents resisting behavior either. It was also found to be a confusing notion and can be integrated into the latitudinal and longitudinal dimensions. Besides, residents’ perceptions of individual relative deprivation and group relative deprivation may individually or jointly affect their resisting behavior towards tourism. The findings show that the relative deprivation theory can be a unique and novel construct to investigate host resistance towards tourism, and has great potential for advancing the knowledge of the field. Based on the findings, several practical suggestions are given in regard to preventing and managing the social conflicts emerged in rural destinations. A few future research directions are provided regarding enhancing the application of the theory into examining the complex tourism sphere.