Using a Modified DANP-mV Model to Explore the Improvement Strategy for Sustainable Development of Rural Tourism

Abstract

Over the span of three decades, the development of rural tourism has substantially improved rural economies and the lives of rural residents; however, it has also negatively affected societies, cultures, and environments, which is not conducive to sustainable development. Motivated by the aim of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, the balanced development of economic, social, cultural, and environmental factors in rural tourism can only be achieved by analyzing the current problems of rural tourism on the basis of an overall system. Therefore, this study developed an overall evaluation system for analyzing the sustainable development of rural tourism. This system contains an indicator framework for sustainable development of rural tourism and an analytical mechanism for an improvement strategy constructed using a modified DANP-mV model. In this study, the evaluation system was applied to the empirical case study of Yudong Village in China. The empirical case study results show that social sustainable development (D2) is not the first priority for improvement, although it exhibits the largest gap. Instead, environmental sustainable development (D4), which exhibits a smaller gap, should receive higher priority for improvement because it is the root cause of social sustainable development (D2). The overall improvement strategy for Yudong Village should follow this path: environmental sustainable development (D4) → social sustainable development (D2) → economic sustainable development (D1) → cultural sustainable development (D3). In addition to demonstrating the effectiveness of the rural tourism sustainable development evaluation system, the empirical case study also demonstrated that the system is capable of identifying the root causes of rural-tourism-related sustainability problems and contributing to the formulation of improvement strategies.