The Influence Mechanism and Measurement of Tourists’ Authenticity Perception on the Sustainable Development of Rural Tourism—A Study Based on the 10 Most Popular Rural Tourism Destinations in China

Abstract

Short-distance rural tourism has become a major form of tourism in China in recent years, as problems caused by urbanization emerge and because of the strict restrictions on the flow of people during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study takes the ten most popular rural tourism destinations in China from 2011 to 2021 as the research object. First, the grounded theory is used to construct the impact model of tourists’ authenticity perception on the sustainable development of rural tourism. The results show that tourists’ perception of rural tourism authenticity includes four dimensions, namely, visual perception, embodied perception, using perception, and interactive perception. With local attachment as the intermediary, authentic perception has a positive effect on the sustainable development of rural tourism, including economic sustainability, ecological sustainability, and cultural sustainability. In the early stage of tourism development, tourists mainly focus on visual authenticity. As tourists are deeply involved in rural tourism, they will pay more attention to interactive authenticity. Then, based on AHP, the measurement index was constructed and a questionnaire survey was conducted among ten villages to verify the effectiveness and universality of the model.