The purpose of this study is to analyse the tourists’ spatiotemporal behaviour at the rural festival using the theory and tracking methods of time geographies and the smart phone application based on global positioning system data. Main results show that most festival tourists visit only the entrance and central spaces, walking along on the same paths, while only a small number of visitors visit the regional commercial area, including the traditional market, main streets in the downtown area, although their tickets allow them to visit these spaces. Based on the time and space density analysis, this study draws the time–space aquarium of the Sancheoneo Ice Festival and can find a spatiotemporal concentration and limitation of socio-economic sustainability in rural tourism using festival as a development booster. Therefore, festival planners and policy-makers should focus on these limited spatial movement patterns and temporal flows of visitors in community-based tourism.

The purpose of this study is to determine urban walking tourists’ spatiotemporal distribution by season. With the Bukchon Hanok Village in Seoul, South Korea, as a study site, a GPS-based smartphone application collects spatiotemporal data from 233 participants, and GIS and statistical methods are used to analyze walking tourists’ spatiotemporal distribution by season. The main results of difference analysis show that the moving and staying variables of urban walking tourists differ significantly by season. In addition, spatiotemporal distributions using ArcGIS's tools show clear spatial and temporal concentrations along commercial areas and the main access road to the study site by season, while residential areas are isolated from the benefits of walking tourism. Policy-makers and planners of walking tours should use these unbalanced spatiotemporal distributions of walking tourists to define policies that would distribute tourists spatially and temporally, thereby decreasing conflicts arise between stakeholders.

Collecting souvenirs is an important component of tourists’ experiences. Since tourists’ views of souvenirs’ authenticity are subjective and vary widely, an empirical study is needed to clarify what tourists demand in the way of souvenirs and what souvenirs they see as authentic. Using pictorial analysis, this study applies six attributes of souvenir authenticity: material, presentation, features, image, feelings, and spirit or interpretation. Twelve souvenir items were offered to 637 tourists in South Korea in the survey. Using differential analysis and multi-dimensional scaling positioning maps, the study shows that a tourist views the authenticity of a country’s souvenirs based on the tourist’s nationality and level of familiarity with the local culture. The results suggest that souvenir suppliers focus on the overall appearance and image of souvenirs and consider the six characteristics of souvenirs’ authenticity.

Tourism to areas traditionally inhabited by ethnic minorities has become an important topic in China during recent years, but the attendant issue of ethnic cultural conservation has become an increasing problem. This study investigates residents’ attitudes toward cultural conservation and their perception of the impact of tourism. The study site is the ancient city of Fenghuang in Hunan province, China. The study’s results show that residents in Fenghuang agree with the cultural conservation, and that their positive perceptions of the impact of tourism are influenced by their attitudes toward cultural conservation. This result means that there is the positive relationships between tourism development and cultural conservation in ethnic minority area. All results reflect the importance of residents’ attitudes toward cultural conservation in the development of tourism, so the study may be useful for both tourism developers and cultural managers.

The aim of this study was to determine the characteristics of forest wetlands by developing factors for site suitability and applying these factors to 107 sites in South Korea. We developed a forest wetland assessment in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment to assess site suitability. We considered 16 factors including slope, elevation, visibility, land ownership, distance to city, and so on. We conducted an expert survey with experts to analyze the relative importance by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). We found that the order of importance of the 5 criteria applied in this study was: (1) Natural Ecology, (2) Land Use, (3) Natural Landscape, (4) Tourist Attraction, and (5) Accessibility. We then analyzed the spatial characteristics of each site based on the AHP result and divided the 107 forest wetlands into three categories by cluster analysis. Sites with high scores on the assessment were primarily the landscape ecology or land use criterion. Our differentiation of these forest wetland characteristics could help enable policymakers to develop sustainable management with the aim of balancing conservation with utilization in ecotourism destinations.

This study investigates the relationship between residents’ perceptions of the impacts of tourism and their attitudes about cultural conservation and tourism development in the consolidation stage of the Tourism Area Life Cycle model. The study site is Zhangjiajie city, one of China’s best known cultural tourist destinations, which previous researchers have shown has entered the consolidation stage. Questionnaire survey is conducted to the residents in this study area, and valid 317 samples are used for analysis. The study’s results show that residents’ positive perceptions of the impacts of tourism in Zhangjiajie influence their attitudes about conservation of cultural resources in the consolidation stage, such as attitudes about cultural conservation, cognition of cultural knowledge, behavior related to cultural conservation, and residents’ attitudes about tourism development. All results reflect the importance for cultural conservation of residents’ positive perceptions of the impacts of tourism.