1. Introduction
With the dawn of the new century, the number of disasters and disaster victims and severity of disaster-related economic losses have significantly increased worldwide, and the disaster crisis has become an obstacle to sustainable development. The crisis is defined as a ‘low-probability, high-consequence’ event, that is, a state of emergency in an unpredictable situation [
1]. The tourism industry is not immune to crises [
2]. The tourism industry is undoubtedly one of the most important components of economies worldwide; however, it is one of the most susceptible and vulnerable components to crises and disasters, as well. In particular, in the twenty-first century, the global tourism industry has been affected by terrorist attacks, political instability, economic recession, ecological security threats, and natural disasters [
3,
4,
5]. However, the management capability and crisis response capacity of the industry to handle complex and critical situations are observed to be limited [
6]. In particular, natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis (e.g., the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and the 2004 Indonesian Tsunami) have significantly affected the local tourism industry. The occurrence of such disasters detrimentally affects tourism development. Natural disasters may destroy the natural environment and resource conditions for tourism development, undermine the service facilities and market order of the tourism industry, and harm tourism practitioners and tourism consumers [
7,
8]. The livelihood of the community becomes unsustainable, which causes widespread damage to the tourism industry [
9,
10]. In this manner, disasters form one of the important factors severely restricting the sustainable development of tourism worldwide [
11,
12,
13,
14].
China is one of the countries that are frequently affected by natural and severe disasters. The Wenchuan earthquake and Southern Snowstorm that occurred in 2008 caused heavy losses to people’s lives and property and, particularly, the development of China’s tourism industry. In particular, the Wenchuan earthquake and its secondary disasters such as mudslides, dammed lakes, and landslides caused heavy losses of life and property to the Chinese people, as well as causing severe losses to the tourism industry in and around the Sichuan Province. On the one hand, disasters frequently occur in the region and, on the other, the local tourism industry is well developed, making the response to and management of sudden crisis events in tourist destinations a time-consuming and difficult task. After the disaster, the tourist destination received both domestic and overseas assistance, particularly through the counterpart assistance program implemented by the central government, which effectively assisted the reconstruction of the destination and recovery of tourism [
15]. In addition, following the ancient Chinese survival philosophy of human beings maintaining a harmonious relationship with their land by mastering the laws of nature (人定胜天,simplified Chinese), changing their passiveness and taking action to protect their land, and transforming crises into opportunities, the residents of the tourist destination played a pivotal role in post-disaster land reconstruction and recovery.
The resident of a community is the first person to respond to an emergency crisis; further, since the residents typically are emotionally attached to the place and wish to ensure community livelihood, they are the most direct stakeholders in crisis response, as well. In particular, residents who have experienced natural disasters and have certain capabilities [
16,
17,
18,
19] often organize community disaster reconstruction organizations, set up a community crisis response team, and enhance the community’s awareness regarding disaster prevention and reduction [
20,
21,
22]. On the other hand, ‘Misfortune contains a blessing, a blessing hidden scourge’ (祸兮福之所倚 福兮祸之所伏, raised by Lao Zi (about 571 BC–471 BC) was a famous philosopher and Taoist founder in China). From the perspective of tourism development, a sudden crisis may be a ‘double-edged sword’. Although the locals suffer losses, a crisis also brings with it certain ‘opportunities’; sometimes, even a crisis can be turned into an opportunity [
9,
23]. Holling pointed out that the post-disaster phase is both the most vulnerable period of the region and the best period for local development [
24]. Similarly, many scholars emphasize the role of social capital in shaping recovery and resilience in disaster contexts, as well as how the impact can enhance the social capital itself [
8,
19]. Often, following a disaster, the popularity of surrounding tourist destinations increases; some new tourist landscapes are created; and post-disaster reconstruction involves some new tourism enterprises, launches new tourism projects, and is even further empowered as part of the tourism participation process, which is also the spotlight effect of post-disaster reconstruction [
25,
26,
27,
28]. From the perspective of stakeholders of tourism destinations, the research on post-disaster community participation has become a hotspot. Many scholars have examined the factors influencing disaster prevention in the tourist community, including community resilience [
29,
30,
31], community participation support [
32,
33], place attachment [
34,
35], community attachment [
36,
37], community livelihood [
38], social capital [
39], crisis response [
40], and crisis management [
4]. Research on tourist communities focuses on community engagement models, community empowerment, community involvement, community attachment, and so on [
41,
42], and mainly relies on the social exchange theory, local identity theory, and tourism life cycle theory [
23,
43,
44,
45]. A review of existing literature based on the perspective of community participation indicates that no previous study has examined community resilience, crisis response, community attachment, and the attitude behaviour theory in an integrated framework using quantitative research methods. This study addresses and focuses on the aforementioned research gap. Further, the current study examines the significant influence of crisis events on the tourism community from the perspective of community participation and crisis response in tourism destinations.
This study explores the mechanism of community participation in tourism based on the perspective of crisis response and constructs a causal model to explain the role and influence of crisis response and community participation after the Wenchuan earthquake. This conceptual model includes perceived the community participation benefit, community resilience, community attachment, community engagement attitude, crisis response attitude, and community participation intentional behavior. In the following sections, the literature review, hypotheses, and conceptual model are presented. Then the questionnaire development, data collection, and analysis are carried out. Finally, the results are discussed and some suggestions and implications are put forward.
3. Research Design and Methods
3.1. Study Area
On 12 May 2008, the 8.0-Richter-magnitude Wenchuan Earthquake occurred in China, killing 69,227 people; injuring 373,643 people; causing 17,923 individuals to go missing; and affecting a total of 46 million persons (
Figure 2). Further, it affected an area of 500,000 km
2 and caused direct economic losses of approximately 845.1 billion yuan. This is the most serious earthquake disaster to have occurred in China over the previous 30 years and the severest natural devastation to occur in the past 10 years. The Sichuan Province, which was the epicentre of the disaster and the pillar of the region’s tourism industry, suffered heavy losses. After the earthquake, the central people’s government in Beijing and the 21 provinces involved in the counterpart assistance program provided disaster relief to the affected county by solving the latter’s basic livelihood problems, assisting the recovery and reconstruction of disaster areas, providing economic support, and receiving positive support and assistance from domestic and foreign individuals, enterprises, and relevant organizations.
Numerous secondary disasters, such as landslides, mudslides, dammed lakes, and collapses, caused by the Wenchuan earthquake severely affected the Sichuan tourism industry, and several tourism resources, infrastructural components, and service facilities suffered extensive devastation. According to statistics, the Wenchuan earthquake caused a total loss of 46.59 billion Yuan to Sichuan Province tourism, and the number of inbound tourists to the Sichuan Province decreased by 59% in 2008. Domestic and inbound tourists in 2007 were 185.69 million and 1.71 million respectively, but during Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 were 174.56 million and 0.70 million. Following the earthquake, the local government focused on tourism development to boost the community’s morale, promote the development of other industries, and reconstruct the post-earthquake tourism industry. The joint efforts of the entire society, the local government, and the community have enabled the restoration of the local social economy and development of tourism. This study selected the Great Jiuzhai Tourism Area in the Sichuan Province, including the World Heritage Sites Jiuzhaigou, Mount Qingcheng, and the national earthquake relic Beichuan County, as the study area. These tourist destinations are rated 5A, the highest rating level, among scenic spots in China, and which has some typical characteristics and suitability.
3.2. Questionnaire Development
The questionnaire consists of two parts. The first part included the characteristics of community population and tourism participation, including gender, age, monthly income, tourist source, occupation, education, etc. The second part consists of the measurement model scale, including community participation benefit perception [
32,
33,
83], community attachment [
60,
84], community resilience [
34,
64], crisis response attitude [
40,
44], community participation attitude and intentional behavior [
14,
23], these questions items mainly come from the literature review, and based on preliminary research, comprehensive amendments were designed and developed (The research team has nearly 20 years of experience in the relevant case studies and content). Rating for each statement was based on a Likert scale ranging from (1) strongly disagrees to (5) strongly agrees.
3.3. Sampling and Measures
The research team comprised four graduate and four doctoral students, and they participated in questionnaire design and questionnaire distribution training. The questionnaire was designed to reflect the requirements of the local community and was distributed among the Great Jiuzhai Tourism Area’s tourism practitioners. In both the questionnaire and the distribution process, we emphasized how the values of measurements were compared before the earthquake occurrence by including the phrase ‘compared to before the earthquake’ in the questionnaire title. The questionnaire was distributed in August 2012 and later field investigation in October 2014. The research group employed the semi-random sampling method and distributed 590 questionnaires. Among them, 569 were returned and, after excluding incomplete questionnaires, 556 valid questionnaires were obtained; the effective response rate was 94%. At the same time, the researcher’s ideas on the study topic were directly written on the questionnaire to enable a better expression of views.
3.4. Data Analysis
This study used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) by structural equation modelling (SEM). SEM is a method to establish, estimate, and test a causality model, which is widely used in social science research. First, the measurement model was analysed and the model’s validity and reliability were assessed. Second, SEM was used to identify relationships among latent constructs. In this study, the SPSS18.0 statistical software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used to process sample data, and both CFA and SEM were conducted using AMOS 17.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). When using a structural equation model, one should test whether the model’s parameters have the inverse estimation hypotheses and examine whether the theoretical model has a common method bias.
5. Discussion and Implications
5.1. Discussion of Results
The study hypotheses were tested, and the outcomes are summarized in
Table 6. The results show that all hypotheses are supported. The outcomes showed that tourism community participation and crisis response attitude had a positive influence on intentional behaviour during the period after the Wenchuan earthquake and verified that the local communities’ attitude was positive and active, rather than negative and passive.
The hypotheses H1 and H2 were supported, which was associated with the great concern expressed by the entire society after the earthquake, as well as the strong support provided by the central government and counterpart provinces. However, the tourism industry serves as the vanguard and booster of post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, bringing hope and vitality to the devastated disaster areas. Compared with the pre-earthquake period, the local community’s opportunities in tourism infrastructure, income, employment, skills training, and participation in management decision-making improved after the disaster, and they directly motivated the local community to more actively support the development of local tourism, which is consistent with the conclusions of many relevant studies [
23,
93,
94,
95].
The hypotheses H3 and H4 were supported, which indicated that community attachment has a positive effect on crisis response and community involvement. The ‘community attachment’ dimension showed a mean value of 4.2, which further indicated that the local community and tourism practitioners have gained certain support and benefits after experiencing a sudden crisis and have higher local plots and capability to respond to crises. To some extent, the disaster improved the local community’s emotional attachment to the area. Meanwhile, tourism is related to the main livelihood of the local community, and tourism development will promote local image communication, cultural folk heritage preservation, and natural ecological protection. This concern and emotional attachment may have further promoted community participation and crisis response, and they verified the positive effects of emotional and functional factors on post-disaster community recovery and tourism crisis response [
34,
76,
84,
96].
The hypotheses H5 and H6 were accepted; they indicated that community resilience has a positive impact on community involvement and crisis response, particularly, the crisis response capability of the post-earthquake community improved. Compared to the pre-earthquake period, the majority of tourism practitioners and community residents were more concerned with crisis response and had more experience in, capability for, and adaptability to responding to risk changes and disaster relief activities after the occurrence of the disaster. These changes have contributed to the effectiveness of post-disaster crisis response and rapid recovery of the tourism livelihoods of locals. After the disaster, governments at all levels and tourism enterprises have increased crisis response and disaster management trainings and drills. The local residents and tourism practitioners pay more attention to disaster prevention and reduction, as well. However, the local community has a wide range of community relationships and social capital, which is conducive to post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. Further, it is demonstrated that the community’s recovery expectations and community attachment improve the locals’ degree of responsiveness to and support for tourism development. Therefore, the initiative of the tourism community is promoted both subjectively and objectively [
16,
23,
64,
97].
The hypotheses H7 and H8 were supported, indicating that community participation attitude has a positive effect on community participation intention and is consistent with the attitude behaviour theory and social exchange theory [
45,
81,
94]. Against the background of crisis response, this structural model is rational and representative. It further reveals that the sudden crisis response and community participation in tourism destinations involves a comprehensive system of multi-element interaction [
4,
33,
39].
From the perspective of total effect, the value of community participation benefit, community attachment, and community resilience to community participation intention is 0.18, 0.18, and 0.64, respectively, indicating that the local community resilience has a stronger impact on community participation intention. Therefore, we should pay more attention to the community resilience effect when the tourist destination crisis response in the process of disaster recovery.
In summary, the theoretical framework proposed in the study was verified, and the community participation and crisis response activities remained positive after the earthquake. To a certain extent, some negative factors require further examination and improvement. Based on this discussion, we constructed a tourism community participation ABC framework, including the aspects of community ‘Attachment’, community participation ‘Benefit’, and community resilience ‘Capability’ and exploring the influencing factors and mechanisms of tourism community participation from the crisis response perspective (
Figure 4).
5.2. Implications
The countermeasures and implications of the study are as follows: First, the local community should understand the key points of community participation and tourism development after a disaster and completely utilize the tourism industry as an opportunity to develop the vanguard. Second, the top-level design plan should be strengthened, a crisis management framework for tourism communities should be constructed, and a long-term mechanism for crisis response in tourism destinations should be established. More focus should be placed on constructing community participation channels, improving tourism participation skills training, increasing community participation empowerment, and further strengthening the breadth and depth of local community participation. Third, the hazard factors should be clarified, negative aspects should be listed, crisis response training and drills should be increased for local communities and tourism enterprises, and the planning and layout of safe evacuation should be strengthened. Fourth, more attention should be paid to benefit sharing in the process of tourism development; the interests of local communities should be considered; community attachments should be utilized, especially in the process of responding to sudden crisis events; and the social capital of local communities and tourism enterprises should be completely mobilised, especially paying more attention to community resilience. These steps provide an inexhaustible driving force for the restoration and reconstruction of the tourism community and the sustainable development of the tourism industry. The Confucian master Dong proposed that the relationship between heaven, earth, and human beings is balanced and harmonious (天生之, 地养之, 人成之); the same philosophy should be applied in disaster reconstruction, enabling human beings to take the initiative in transforming nature, taking advantage of all situations, and overcoming negative predicaments (Zhongshu Dong (BC 179–BC 104), a renowned Confucian scholar in ancient China).
5.3. Limitations and Future Research Directions
The limitations and prospects of the study are as follows: First, this study constructs a community participation model from the perspective of crisis response based on positive factors (perceived interests, community attachment, crisis response capability, etc.), which limits the study’s generalizability and comprehensiveness. However, if the research is carried out based on negative factors (perceived costs, psychological trauma, population socioeconomic losses, etc.), one can further expand the scientific and applicable boundaries of this field. Second, one should consider some factors such as the degree of involvement of the tourism industry, degree of crisis impact, and life cycle of a tourism destination, which are not considered in the current study. Third, this survey was performed among tourism practitioners. Therefore, the results obtained may differ from those among general populations. Finally, the case study is limited in that it is based on the Chinese collectivist system and set against the background of a socialist developing country, which may be very different from the non-collectivist system followed by capitalist countries, such as the Western countries. Further, the socio-economic system can have different development backgrounds, which should be considered in future research.
6. Conclusions
This study selected the tourism community following the occurrence of the Wenchuan earthquake in China as the study area and used SEM to examine the tourism community participation mechanism from the crisis response perspective. First, it reveals that the post-earthquake community participation benefit perception, community resilience, and community attachment positively affect crisis response and community participation, and it verifies the effect of attitude on behavioural intention. Second, from the perspective of community resilience, the local community’s social capital, and capability of and experience in managing the crisis, the community attachment complex, and the various support facilities and opportunities gained after the disaster promote the depth and breadth of community participation. This is also an interactive process of mutual promotion and enhancement, rather than being a one-way pre-factor. Third, we proposed the ‘ABC’ framework of tourism community participation based on crisis response, thereby expanding the boundaries of tourist community participation research. This framework has theoretical and practical significance for the enhancement of tourism community participation and tourism crisis management. Finally, this study is based on the community participation theory, involving crisis management theory, community resilience theory, community attachment theory, social exchange theory, and attitude behaviour theory, based on which the research model of tourism community participation and crisis response is integrated. Hence, this study can be considered a comprehensive and pioneering research effort.