Perspectives on Cultural and Tourism Industry Development in Shaanxi Province, China
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Abstract
This qualitative descriptive case study examined how different stakeholder positions shape diagnoses of cultural tourism integration challenges in Shaanxi Province, China, and developed stakeholder-informed, context-sensitive implementation priorities. Twenty-four key informants were selected through purposive sampling and snowball sampling: six attraction owners or managers, six village heads, six local government officers, and six tour guides or travel agency representatives. Semi-structured interviews were organized around five practical planning dimensions - goals, methods, resources, implementation, and control - and analyzed in NVivo 12 through a hybrid deductive-inductive thematic procedure. Instrument quality was supported by expert reviews for clarity, relevance, and alignment with the objectives. Credibility was strengthened through comparison across stakeholder groups, triangulation with documentary and scholarly sources, peer review of the codebook and themes, and attention to divergent accounts.
Six connected challenges were identified, namely, pressure to commercialize heritage, weak interpretation and digital access, limited community decision-making and benefit sharing, urban-rural resource inequality, uneven professional capacity, and fragmented governance and monitoring. Stakeholder positions produced distinct priorities: attraction managers emphasized conservation and operational continuity; village heads emphasized voice, local control, and benefit sharing; officials emphasized coordination and regulation; and practitioners emphasized visitor experience and service standards. The study contributes a role-sensitive implementation framework linking the five planning dimensions to responsible actors, time horizons, resource needs, monitoring indicators, and community accountability. The recommendations are analytically derived proposals for comparable heritage-rich settings, not province-wide prevalence estimates.
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