Nature-based tourism attractiveness (NBTA) has yet to be assessed by coupling empirical measurement of supply and demand indicators with simultaneous assessment of tourist and tourism expert perspectives. Based on a guiding principle that the overall attractiveness of a tourism destination should combine the evaluation of existing resources or attractions and their perceived attractiveness, the purpose of this study is to develop and apply a novel methodological approach for assessing tourism attractiveness of nature-based destinations. This approach developed here combines an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with a Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation Method (FCEM). The resulting Fuzzy-AHP approach to NBTA was tested at the Changbai Mountain Biosphere Reserve, a popular nature-based tourism destination in China. The findings confirm that this Fuzzy-AHP approach is a more reliable and comprehensive method for evaluating the destination attractiveness than pre-existing approaches. In addition to theoretical contributions related to the merging of various approaches to assessing destination attractiveness and the development of a tool specific to nature-based tourism destinations, this work will be of interest to decision makers seeking more effective tools for planning, marketing, and developing nature-based tourism destinations.

The purpose of the research presented here was to empirically assess resident perceptions of tourism development around the Changbai Mountain Biosphere Reserve (CMBR), a protected area straddling the China and North Korea border. Several theoretical approaches to the assessment of local resident attitudes towards tourism were reviewed and integrated into a novel factor-cluster assessment of residents in Erdaobaihe, the community most adjacent to CMBR. This analysis quantitatively grouped residents based on their perceptions of tourism’s economic, social, cultural, and environmental consequences for the town. An exploratory factor analysis of resident perceptual items first revealed six perception domains, and a subsequent cluster analysis then identified four distinct groups of residents based on these perceptions. A descriptive profile of each cluster and the significant differences among clusters are provided. Advancing our theoretical understanding of resident perspectives of tourism development, this cluster-based segmentation approach, demonstrated here, holds much promise for elaborating on the many ways that residents respond to new and long-standing forms of tourism in their communities. These theoretical and methodological contributions will be applicable to scholars as well as tourism practitioners and policy makers.

Extensive land-use and land-cover change, triggered by rapid development of tourism and the expansion of townships, has occurred in the area surrounding the Changbai Mountain Biosphere Reserve (CMBR) in northeast China, a reservoir for distinctive ecosystems and biological diversity. The objective of this study was to examine the land-use changes surrounding the reserve in the context of forest and nature reserve management with the aid of maps from Landsat MSS imagery of 1977 and Landsat TM imagery of 1991 and 2007. The total land area and its change over time for each land-use class were calculated and cell-by-cell change data were used to detect, quantify, and determine the trends in land-use conversions. Results showed that there were large increases in land area for residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation land-use types, whereas the forest area decreased considerably. At the same time, the area under jurisdiction of townships has nearly doubled, with the largest increase in Manjiang. Land-use change was caused by regional population growth as a result of tourism development that triggered the expansion of township boundaries and contributed to shifts in forest management policy. Our study offers land and reserve managers within the CMBR and similar areas a basis for making more informed land-use and management decisions to potentially minimize detrimental ecological impacts of land-use change.

Agricultural heritage tourism resources, represented by ecological vulnerability and cultural sensitivity, require careful stewardship. Tourists' environmentally responsible actions are vital for preserving both the natural and cultural environment of these destinations, ensuring their sustainability. According to “cognition-emotion-behavior theory” and the hierarchy model of tourism experience, this study constructs a conceptual model between tourists' environmental fit, place attachment and pro-environmental behavior. Structural equation modeling and the Bootstrap method are employed for empirical testing. Results indicate that: (1) Function fit has a significant positive effect on tourists' pro-environmental behaviors. (2) Service fit also has a significant positive effect on tourists' pro-environmental behaviors. (3) Place attachment mediates the relationship between environmental fit and pro-environmental behaviors. Therefore, recommendations are offered for managing agricultural heritage tourism destinations to cultivate tourists' sense of functional fit and service fit and to strengthen their place attachment.