A study on the system of influential factors for high-quality development of Chinese cultural and tourism small towns: Insights from W town

• Main Author: CHEN, Yu
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: China's cultural and tourism town; high-quality development; impact factors; case study; Asian Studies; Business Administration, Management, and Operations; Tourism and Travel
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/480; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/etd_coll/article/1478/viewcontent/GPBA_AY2017_CKGSB_SMU_DBA_Chen_Yu.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Under the dual support of the government and market, the number of cultural and tourism small towns in China has increased rapidly in recent years. However, many small towns have encountered problems such as poor performance, disputes over interests, and operational deficiencies during their rapid development. As China's economy gradually enters a phase of high-quality development, how to promote the high-quality development of cultural and tourism small towns has become a concern for experts in the industry and academia. Currently, research on the high-quality development of cultural and tourism small towns in China is relatively fragmented and lacks a comprehensive study of the entire development process of these small towns, making it difficult to provide effective theoretical guidance for their high-quality development. Based on this, this study reviews the relevant research on cultural and tourism small towns in China and proposes to construct a system of influential factors for high-quality development of Chinese cultural and tourism small towns from a Life Cycle perspective, using qualitative methods such as case studies. Additionally, the study will use the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the weights of each influential factor. Firstly, the author delineates the process of the dynamic evolution of the cultural and tourism towns’ high-quality development in China through industry research and literature review. The whole process can be divided into the project proposal, planning, construction, operation, and renewal stages. Then, the author selects W, a top-ranking town in China's cultural and tourism industry, as a case study to summarize the influencing factors of W's high-quality development. It turns out that the factors of W town in each stage of development are different. Specifically, the factors are the development value judgement at the project proposal stage, top-level architecture design, design of three major patterns, and consumer scene creation at the planning stage, high-quality implementation and management at the construction stage, visitor experience design and brand impact at the operation stage, and content and product innovation at the renewal stage. To further test the universality of the findings in the W-town case study, the author selected three additional cases with good development dynamics in China and extracted the influencing factors of their high-quality development based on the grounded theory. The comparative analysis found that the conclusions were basically consistent with the W-town case study. Based on this, the author constructed the impact factor system and designed the expert consultation questionnaire. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) of the questionnaire data calculated the weights of the primary and secondary indicators of the impact factor system. By combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, this study explores the factors influencing the quality development of several cases throughout their life cycle, which fills the gap of dynamic tracking of cases in existing research on cultural and tourism towns and enriches the perspective of research in this field. The study provides a powerful tool for the government and enterprises to assess the development status of China’s cultural and tourism towns in the future.