Search results

This beginning chapter offers a comprehensive overview of community development, tracing its historical roots and societal implications. It underscores community development’s role in fostering social cohesion and positive change. Beginning with its foundational principles of collective action, participation, and empowerment, the chapter delves into its evolution in response to industrialization and urbanization. It explores diverse scales, contexts, tools, and strategies used in community development and its broader societal impact. The chapter advocates for inclusivity and active engagement of community members, emphasizing tailored solutions that address unique challenges. It acknowledges complexities like ethical dilemmas, power imbalances, and cultural sensitivities, underscoring the importance of integrity and local context understanding in community development.

This study aims to apply the appreciative inquiry approach (AI) to develop a tourism strategy for poverty alleviation in marginalised communities. The focus is to provide practical insights for leveraging tourism to drive positive socio-economic change for the impoverished, using Rosetta, a port city in Egypt with cultural and historical significance, as a case study.

This qualitative applied study uses the four-D phases of AI and thematic analysis to strategise tourism development in Rosetta. Through interviews, focus groups and field visits, the study identifies tourism potential, stakeholder aspirations and actionable strategies for sustainable development. The approach prioritises a bottom-up, community-centric and stakeholder-involved process, aiming for inclusive and equitable growth.

The study revealed Rosetta’s underutilised tourism potential, emphasising heritage tourism. Although tourism offers some economic benefits, its impact on alleviating poverty in Rosetta remains limited. A holistic strategy for tourism development in Rosetta is proposed for economic growth and poverty reduction, focusing on sustainable management, local empowerment, enhanced marketing, improved infrastructure and diversified tourism offerings.

While AI is not new in qualitative studies, the novelty of this study lies in its application to tourism planning for poverty alleviation in a marginalised community like Rosetta, introducing a comprehensive tourism strategy with an original framework applicable to comparable destinations. The study’s significance is emphasised by providing actionable strategies for policymakers, valuable insights for practitioners and enriching the discourse and methodology on pro-poor tourism for academics, representing a step towards filling the gap between theoretical concepts and practical strategies.

This chapter delineates the conditions, challenges and opportunities for the sustainability of small entrepreneurial firms involved in local food tourism. It raises awareness on how these businesses can enhance their competitiveness in this market. It puts forward an analytical framework that is based on the economic, social, environmental and cultural sustainability of small local food tourism entrepreneurs in Swedish, Italian and Spanish contexts. This research implies that the financial sustainability of these small enterprises is contributing to local economic growth and employment in their country. From the social sustainability aspect these tourism businesses are intrinsically linked to local communities. Their responsible practices are meant to safeguard the environmental sustainability as well as the preservation of their local culture and heritage. At the same time, they enable them to add value to their destination’s cultural sustainability.

Against the background of actively promoting the reform of mixed ownership in China, this study regards government ownership in private sector enterprises (PSEs) as an important political connection mechanism and examines private holding listed companies in high-polluting industries that sold China A-shares from 2012 to 2019.

Using regression models such as Tobit and negative binomial estimation, the research empirically examines the impact of government ownership in PSEs on the corporate fulfillment of their environmental responsibilities.

Government ownership can effectively promote PSEs to fulfill their environmental responsibilities. Government ownership, as a corporate-level political connection mechanism, enables the government to provide firms with more environmental protection subsidies and environmental tax incentives, encouraging firms to fulfill their environmental responsibilities. When considering the policy risks faced by PSEs, government ownership effectively reduces the impact of policy uncertainty on firms’ fulfillment of environmental responsibilities. Additionally, verifying the economic development level of the city in which the firm is located makes the positive impact of government ownership on fulfillment of environmental responsibilities of PSEs in regions with lower economic development levels more significant.

Unlike existing studies that generally use the personal political identity of entrepreneurs to measure the political connections of PSEs, this study regards government ownership in PSEs as an important political connection mechanism. It provides a useful reference for China to formulate environmental protection policies for PSEs.

The objective of this study is to make a conceptual analysis of Community-based tourism (CBT). CBT, one of the tourism activities that internalised sustainability, has several common threads with nature-based tourism activities. However, these similarities/common elements must be more understandable between those relevant tourism activities. From this fact, this research aims to assign a theoretical framework for CBT and reveal the differences between CBT activities from other tourism types.

Tourism, unavoidably, is one of the critical sectors that require sustainable usage of resources. Because visiting natural, historical and cultural values/attractions constitute the primary reason for tourists' travel motivations, making those values/attractions sustainable for the future is essential. However, the sustainable usage of those values/attractions can be enabled with protection and maintenance balance. On the other hand, this philosophy will only come true if obtaining the locals support it. Therefore, CBT propounds that local people should make the most of tourism at all levels, especially the economic contribution. Within this context, the importance and necessity of these issues will be manifested in this chapter, presenting a conceptual framework. Additionally, this chapter will support other researchers in constituting the conceptual framework and will guide policymakers and other stakeholders to understand the importance of CBT.

The tourism industry may result in positive as well as negative effects for local communities. Although it is generating economic growth and job creation in different parts of the world, it can impact on sociocultural and ecological dimensions of destinations. A high influx of tourists can disrupt the residents' attitudes, behaviors, and their quality of life. It can also lead to the degradation of natural environments, including land, air, water, plants, and animals. In this light, this research raises awareness about the importance of managing tourism in a sustainable and responsible manner. The researchers deliberate about the opportunities and challenges of tourism. Afterward, they focus on the implementation of sustainable tourism development activities in the South African context. In conclusion, they put forward their recommendations for policymakers.

This chapter considers the current situation of community-based tourism (CBT) in Sri Lanka, available potentials to promote this for the future tourism industry in Sri Lanka and demand and global trends of CBT. This chapter consists of an introduction examining CBT in the global scenario. This chapter's second title discusses the potential of CBT in Sri Lanka. The third topic concerns the demand and trends of CBT in a changing economy. The fourth topic is discussing global best practices and policies for CBT development. Finally, it concludes with recommendations and suggestions for CBT development in Sri Lanka.

This case study was conducted through qualitative analysis, and data will be collected with primary and secondary data. Primary data will be collected through interviews with industry stakeholders, tourists and other relevant interviewees. In addition, it will be carried out observation on selected community-based destinations. Furthermore, the secondary data will be gathered through books, articles, research papers, websites and other materials. This chapter conducted an empirical study on CBT in Sri Lanka. It brings the values of CBT to a changing economy. Furthermore, this study identified problems, potentials, demands and trends for future tourism development by evaluating global best practices and policies.

This study aims to investigate the factors affecting urban economic development in emerging economic market countries and to provide a new research perspective on urban skyscraper construction.

An empirical analysis based on a difference-in-differences (DID) model is conducted using data of urban data in China that expand into developed markets from 2003 to 2018.

The results of the spatial heterogeneity test indicate that the construction of skyscrapers has a significant promotional effect on the eastern city's economy. In contrast, it has a significant inhibitory effect in the central and western regions. Further findings demonstrate that the construction of skyscrapers can influence urban economic development by promoting industrial agglomeration, especially when the transmission effect of the diversified accumulation of tertiary industry is more prominent. The expansion analysis shows that skyscrapers have increased the level of trade in the city, and the impact on trade has an optimal height.

This paper focuses on the economic and trade effects of skyscrapers, and the optimal height of skyscrapers needs to be discussed in more depth, which is also the next problem the researchers need to study.

The government should attach importance to and promote the construction of urban skyscrapers, and do a good job in overall planning and design. The city should formulate preferential policies in land, taxation, finance, system and other aspects to increase support for urban skyscraper construction and promote local economic development.

This study focuses on the impact of urban skyscraper construction on the economic and trade development of cities in developing countries, which not only complements the relevant research on the economic effects of urban skyscraper construction, but also helps to provide reference for the sustainable development of urbanization in many developing countries.

This paper aims to examine the unique Chinese context by analyzing the city labels (e.g. smart city and eco city) used by Chinese local governments at or above the provincial capital level to represent themselves (adopted city labels) and the developmental pathways they actually pursued (adopted developmental pathways).

The authors compared the city brand choices to those anticipated based on their geographic and economic contexts (predicted city labels and developmental pathways) as well as the directives outlined in national planning documents (imposed city labels and developmental pathways). The authors identified ten main categories of city labels used to designate themselves and establish the frequency of their use based on municipal plan documents, economic and geographic data and national plan documents and policy reports, respectively.

The authors discovered that both local economic development and geographic factors, as well as top-down administrative influences, significantly impact city branding strategies in the 38 Chinese cities studied. When these models fall short in predicting adopted city labels and pathways, it is often because cities favor a service-oriented reputation over a manufacturing-focused one, and they prefer diverse, multifaceted industrial images to uniform ones.

The originality and value of this paper lie in its contribution to the academic literature on city branding by developing a predictive model for brand development at the municipal level, with explicit attention to the national-local nexus. The paper’s approach differs from existing research in the first cluster of city branding by not addressing issues of stakeholder involvement or adoption and implementation processes. Additionally, the paper’s focus on the political power dynamics at the national level and urban governance details at the municipal level provides a unique perspective on the topic. Overall, this paper provides a valuable contribution to the field of city branding by expanding the understanding of brand development and its impact on the socioeconomic environment.

This paper aims to explore the rationale, the process and the outcomes and risks of place branding in rural China.

An in-depth case study analysis, including interviews, has been conducted.

Place branding in the case of China is practiced and dominated through administrative entities by using subsidies and regional development programs to coordinate, organize and promote local agricultural resources. Although this government-led place branding has effective effects on rural development, it is unsustainable and unstable because it lacks sufficient market and stakeholder participation.

The effectiveness of place branding in China has been examined and proved.

The government’s role in place branding in China should be adjusted. The government should position itself as a service and auxiliary role. Simultaneously, it should strengthen market-oriented operations and stakeholder participation in place branding.

This paper is one of the first contributions to examine the impact of place branding as a rural development policy tool in China, and the in-depth case study examines and proves the effectiveness of place branding in rural China.