Hongcun, China-Residents' Perceptions of the Impacts of Tourism on a Rural Community: A Mixed Methods Approach

The article reports the results of a mixed methods research study with a sample of 418 respondents in a quantitative study and semistructured interviews with 40 respondents, both sets of respondents residing in the village of Hongcun, Anhui Province, China. The quantitative study involved approximately 43% of the adult village residents. Hongcun is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site that hosts over 500,000 visitors a year, of whom the majority are domestic Chinese. The research was informed not only by past literature relating to the community impacts of tourism but also issues pertaining to place attachment, research paradigms, and the relevancy of past non-Chinese research to the Chinese context. There was evidence that the village still embraces tourism although disquiet existed as to past contractual arrangements made on behalf of the village. It was also found that the quantitative and qualitative data were mutually congruent, although the latter provided insights missing from the former. It is recommended that when past research is replicated in new cultural settings there is a need for a mixed methods approach to be adopted because dependency upon quantitative methods alone may fail to provide important contextual material.