Abstract
Chinese government has introduced Pro-Poor Tourism (PPT) for poverty alleviation since 2014 and the policy has been evaluated positively. This study deals with evaluation of the policy by measuring income impacts of the forms of farmersʼ entry into the tourism industry in rural poor areas. Although the policy has been promoted through focusing and accelerating an enterprise form of tourism business, there are many different forms of entry into tourism business, and also the impacts of income formation should be different by the forms of entry. To clarify this research question, three PPT villages in Henan Province were selected as typical successful case of the policy. 394 households were collected from the three villages (78.8％ as effective sample size). The study based on logistic multiple regression analysis clarified that the enterprise form of business requires relatively stronger base of business background such as family size, education, and social networks. As a result, the policy directly supported more relatively well-off farm households than those in poverty. However, the study based on propensity score match (PSM) clarified that the income impacts of participating tourism industry by non-enterprise form is stronger than those of participation by enterprise form if controlled environmental determining factors of participation forms. Therefore, it is important for PPT of China to emphasize more participation through non-enterprise form into tourism which poor farm households can cope easily with normal or weaker business backgrounds.
