Evaluation of Community Tourism Empowerment of Ancient Town Based on Analytic Hierarchy Process: A Case Study of Zhujiajiao, Shanghai

Abstract

The research on community empowerment in the protection and utilization of ancient towns has practical significance for the sustainable development of ancient towns. Combined with empirical research, questionnaire survey, this paper analyzes the residents’ awareness of empowerment in the community participation of tourism, taking Zhujiajiao ancient town as a case study. Firstly, the evaluation system of community empowerment is established from four dimensions, including economy, society, politics, and psychology. Secondly, the weights of various factors are calculated by using the analytic hierarchy process, and the status quo of community tourism empowerment is comprehensively evaluated by the fuzzy analysis method. The results show that the degree of community empowerment in Zhujiajiao ancient town is between “average” and “good”. Psychological empowerment has the best score, while political empowerment is relatively weak. So, the dilemma of the top-down participation system needs to be changed. Self-government tourism organizations and the rules of income distribution should be established along with the ability training of tourism management to optimize the community participation mechanism. Application of the analytic hierarchy process to ancient town tourism empowerment is a new attempt and the evaluation scale can be used to other similar sites. Strategies in this paper have referential value for tourism sustainability in practice.