Abstract
Although rural tourism (RT) can contribute to reducing the rural-urban economic gap by providing
additional opportunities for income, literature on the topic is limited, particularly in developing economies. Thus,
firstly we investigated this issue by a fixed-effects model of panel data at the semi-micro level focusing on eight districts of Fujian province, China. Results revealed that when the GDP of tourism increased in rural areas, the rural-urban income gap became smaller. Secondly, by a binary logit model applied at the micro-level from our surveyed data in Taining county, Fujian province, we investigated the factors contributing to operators’ satisfaction and incomes. The results showed that those RT operators who have RT income from 10% to 30% of their total have repeat visitors and are more satisfied. Operators with only a primary school education are less satisfied with their RT operation. Operators who desire to improve service quality, have their own business and have easily accessed farms derive more income from RT. At the same time, it is important for operators to balance tourism activities with other farm activities due to constraints on managerial resources.
