A study on villagers’ perception of social-cultural impact of tourism in ethnic village and its difference: Taking Xijiang Miao Village as an example

Although the social and cultural impacts of tourism has become one of the focuses in tourism research, research on villagers’ perception of the social and cultural impacts of tourism development and its differences among villagers in ethnic villages is still insufficient. This study analyzed the constructs of villagers’ perception of the social and cultural impacts of tourism, and calculated villagers’ overall level of perception, by using the survey data collected from the villagers in Xijiang Miao Village in Leishan County, Guizhou Province, where tourism is developing, and the factor analysis method. Then, multivariate analysis of variance was used to test the differences in the perception of among different group of villagers, and interviewing data were used to explain the differences. The results show that: ① Villagers’ perception of social and cultural impacts of tourism in Xijiang Miao Village is of five positive dimensions respectively in traditional culture protection, social relation improvement, settlement environment improvement, social structure improvement, and living standards improvement, and of two negative dimensions respectively in social conflicts and marriage problems; ② Xijiang Miao Villagers as a whole perceive settlement environment improvement, social structure and social conflicts higher than other dimensions; ③ The more the villagers participate in tourism (such as young and middle-aged people, employees of tourism companies, those relying on tourism income) or the more the villagers are affected by tourism (those in Yanghao District and Pingzhai District), the higher their perception of both positive and negative impacts. Finally, according to these findings, some corresponding countermeasures and suggestions were put forward.