Abstract:

Past research has verified the importance of the single factor of rural tourism in achieving common prosperity from different perspectives, but it has overlooked the complex interaction mechanism within the influencing factors of rural tourism and the significant impact on rural common prosperity, resulting in significant differences or even contradictions in the research conclusions. Based on this, the implementation path of common prosperity in key rural tourism villages in Zhejiang Province of China was explored under the comprehensive influence of multiple factors from a holistic perspective by using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method. It was shown that a single conditional variable was difficult to impose significant effect on achieving rural common prosperity. Therefore, it was necessary to fully leverage the complex interaction of multiple factors to effectively achieve the goal of common prosperity. The deveopment of rural tourism could achieve higher level rural common prosperity goals through two pathways (pull driven type, push driven type), or the general level rural common prosperity goals by three pathways (lost direction type, inefficient integration type, and resource ineffective type). The participation of communities in rural tourism was identified as a key factor in achieving the goal of higher level rural common prosperity. Only when the participation of communities in rural tourism and other influencing factors were effectively combined in an appropriate way, the level of rural common prosperity could be promoted. The good rural tourism operation capability could attract tourists through its strong market influence, effectively compensating for the lack of attractiveness of rural tourism resources and inadequate implementation of rural tourism development policies, hence realize the higher level rural common prosperity. These findings could provide useful insight for the realization of common prosperity by the development of rural tourism in China.

Key words: rural tourism, common prosperity, qualitative comparative analysis, participation of community