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Article

Tea Culture Tourism Perception: A Study on the Harmony of Importance and Performance

by
Quan Zhou
1,†,
Kai Zhu
1,*,†,
Ling Kang
2 and
Lóránt Dénes Dávid
3,4,*
1
Faculty of Resources and Environmental Science, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China
2
College of Resource Environment and Tourism, Hubei University of Arts and Science, Xiangyang 441053, China
3
Faculty of Economics and Business, John von Neumann University, 6000 Kecskemet, Hungary
4
Institute of Rural Development and Sustainable Economy, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, 2100 Godollo, Hungary
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
These authors contributed equally to this work.
Sustainability 2023, 15(3), 2838; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032838
Submission received: 8 January 2023 / Revised: 24 January 2023 / Accepted: 1 February 2023 / Published: 3 February 2023
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tourism's Resilience in the Context of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs))
Browse Figures
Versions Notes

Abstract

:
Tea culture tourism is a product of the combination of agricultural tourism and ecotourism. After the COVID-19 period, this product is more and more popular. Tourism performance is an important index for measuring the development level of tourist destinations, and research on the influencing factors of tourism performance is an important way to promote the high-quality development of tea culture tourism. Using the tea tourism town of Wushan as a case study, 452 valid questionnaires were used as research data, and exploratory factor analysis, paired sample t-test and IPA analysis were applied. The results indicate that: (1) tourism performance is mainly divided into 5 dimensions and 22 specific indicators, including service quality, resource environment, tourism transportation, tourism-supporting facilities and tea tourism products; (2) there is a significant difference between the degree of importance and performance of visitors to each indicator, and the overall tourism performance of the case sites at an average level; (3) convenient service, professional service, business management, park traffic, parking conditions, environmental design, shopping environment, tea quality, and tea culture characteristics are potential advantageous factors, and ‘service with a smile’, accessibility, trail layout, overall image, air quality, natural scenery, landscape vignettes, network communication, public toilets, sanitation facilities, tourist service centers, tea travel activities, and tourism souvenirs are areas in need of improvement.

1. Introduction

Tea is one of the three major beverages in the world, and China is the country of origin of tea and the country with the largest tea plantation area in the world [1]. Tea culture based on tea leaves, including tea people, tea history, tea events, tea technology, tea ware, tea food, tea art and other elements, is highly representative culture in traditional Chinese culture [2]. The essence of tourism is culture; culture is the soul of tourism, and tourism activities without cultural elements fall into the trap of superficiality and mediocrity [3]. In China’s tea culture heritage, there is a rich cultural connotation and ecological value. Ecotourism originates from the contradiction between the development of production, the natural environment, and people’s needs for a better life, and is a new form of tourism from the perspective of the ecological impact of tourism [4]. With the gradual rise of the ecotourism concept, many tea-producing areas began to integrate tea mountain ecology, tea-making techniques, tea culture, tea folklore and other resources for in-depth tourism development [5]. The combination of ecotourism and tea culture is not only conducive to tapping the ecological meaning of tourism activities and improving tourism quality, but also contributes to the transformation and development of the local tea industry and has important practical significance for the construction of China’s ecological civilization [6,7,8] and the inheritance of cultural folklore [9].
With the increase in travel experience, changes of lifestyle and gradual changes in values, the traditional type of tourism can no longer meet the needs of the public, and the form of leisure and cultural tourism that emphasizes the experience of tourists is becoming popular [10]. Therefore, the tea industry’s experience-based tea culture tourism mode has been gradually accepted by the majority of tourists. In general, tea culture tourism refers to the new state tourism model that combines the historical tea culture features with the ecological environment and leisure activities. Therefore, tea culture tourism not only covers the general nature of tourism [11,12] including elements such as consumption, leisure, social and aesthetic attractions, but also shows the uniqueness that is different from other types of tourism. Through the beautiful natural landscape and rich human characteristics, natural resources, human resources, tea culture connotation, etc., into one, it is possible to meet the needs of different occupations and different ages of tourists by covering a variety of tourism types such as cultural tourism, leisure tourism, folklore tourism, health tourism, agricultural tourism, and so on.
Tea culture tourism research emerged in the 1990s [13], and can be roughly divided into three categories.
  • What is tea culture tourism? This is mainly concerned with the concept and type of tea culture tourism division [14]. Scholars believe that tea culture tourism is a multi-dimensional new form of tourism.
  • How to develop tea culture tourism? This mainly analyzes the development mode of the tea industry and tourism industry, and the tourism products designed that are based on special market demand and geographical factors can be divided into various forms [15].
  • What kind of tea culture tourism is developed? This mainly studies the current situation, problems and policies of tea culture tourism [16].
The development of cultural tourism has become a research focus that cannot be ignored by tourism academics [17], and tourism performance can be used as a measure of the quality of tea culture tourism development [18]. This study takes a typical scenic spot of tea culture tourism development, Xiangyang Wushan tea travel town, as a case site, constructs an evaluation system for the performance index of tea culture tourists, empirically examines the quality of tea culture tourism development at the case site [19], explores the advantages and possible shortcomings in development and construction, and provides a useful reference for realizing the sustainable development of the tea industry and tourism industry.
Tourism performance usually refers to the comprehensive psychological evaluation of tourists after visiting and experiencing tourist attractions, measuring the extent to which the attractions meet their own tourism needs in terms of infrastructure, tourism landscape, hospitality services and other aspects [20]. For tourist attractions, tourism performance is an important measure of the quality of their development [21]. High tourism performance not only effectively builds a good reputation [22] and enhances the tourism image of tourist destinations [23], but also significantly increases visitor loyalty and visitability, which helps tourist attractions improve the quality of tourism services and scenic spot management to obtain a long-term stable visitor flow scale and thus achieve revenue benefit growth. Tourism performance affects future tourist behavior [24]. Many scholars have used tourism performance to study and explain tourist loyalty [25], tourists’ willingness to revisit [26], and destination enhancement paths [27], among other factors.
The carrier of tea culture tourism is the natural landscape [28] and characteristic agriculture [16] represented by tea gardens [29], tea mountains [30,31], etc. Its main contents include elements of tea culture [32], tea folklore [1], and tea stories [33]. It is an eco-tourism activity, the core is tourist experience and ecology [34], and it aims at tourism performance and the conservation of nature [35]. Such activities break the barriers of traditional tourism [36], participate in the development of multiple resource elements, and achieve the goal of sustainability in tourism. On this basis, tourism performance can be used as a measure of these aims [37].

2. Research Design

2.1. Study Area

Figure 1 shows the location of the Wushan town. Wushan tea travel town belongs to Gucheng County, Xiangyang City, with a town area of approximately 243.9 square kilometers, an arable land area of approximately 3.2 thousand mu, and a resident population of over 36,000. The topography of Wushan town is high in the southwest and low in the northeast, with many mountains and hills and complex topography. The main rivers in the territory are the Ban River and Yanchi River, and the valleys are crisscrossed, with the climatic characteristics of four distinct seasons and the same period of rain and heat, which makes Wushan town suitable for tea planting. Wushan town has 58,000 mu of ecological tea plantations, forming the basis for the three famous tea brands ‘Yuhuangjian’, ‘Yanhexiang’ and ‘Zhenwuyoulan’. This contributed to Wushan town ranking as the first tea township in Hubei, selected as part of the 2020 agricultural industry strong town construction list. Tea has become the main economic support of Wushan town. The main scenic area of Yanhe Ecological Village was assessed as a National AAA Tourist Attraction [38].
Wushan town is based on the tea industry, driving tourism development. By holding a series of activities, such as the tea king competition, annual festivals, rural storytelling, artists in the five mountains, study tour groups, etc., the town is committed to creating a platform for the multiple coordinated developments of the tea industry and ecological co-prosperity, tea industry and tourism integration, and festivals and industry interaction. Based on the tourism industry and local culture, Wushan town has gradually developed a characteristic Wushan culture. Wushan town has rich tea culture resources, religious culture resources and red culture resources. Wushan town has a long history of tea culture, which can be traced back to Lu Yu, the god of tea in the Tang Dynasty. Several Buddhist and Taoist religious sites exist in Wushan town, such as Jiming Guan, Wanfo Cave and Tianchi Temple. There are also red cultural resources such as the site of General Liu Changyi’s temporary command post, Huangshanya Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery, and Meng Guofu Memorial Hall [39].

2.2. Questionnaire Design

This questionnaire consists of two parts. The first part is the demographic information (gender, age, monthly income level, occupation, permanent residence, education level) and information on tourists’ behavioral characteristics (number of visits, mode of travel, experiential activities, travel spending and length of stay). The second part is the importance and performance rating given by visitors to various attributes of Wushan tea travel town.
Through several revisions, surveys and exploratory factor analyses by experts in geographic science, tourism management and hotel management, the final questionnaire formed a total of 5 tourism performance dimension attributes and 22 evaluation index items for service quality, resource environment, tourism transportation, tourism-supporting facilities and tea tourism products. A 5-point Likert scale was used for measurement. The above questions asked about subjective attitudes, ranked by the following categories: very dissatisfied, dissatisfied, average, satisfied, very satisfied. The above subjective attitudes were in turn given a score of 1 to 5, so that the interviewed tourists were scored according to their active attitude toward and actual perception of the 22 specific items.

2.3. Data Collection

This study investigates and collects the tourism performance data of Wushan tea travel town by distributing questionnaires in two ways: online, and offline in a face-to-face tourist attraction. To ensure the quality of the questionnaire, offline questionnaires were only issued to downstream (visited: tourists who have finished their tours) tourists. To ensure that the interviewed tourists undertook the Wushan tea travel town experience before accepting the tourism performance questionnaire, online questionnaires were only issued to the Wushan tea travel town tourist WeChat group (the group consists of tourists who have visited the Wushan tea travel town) to ensure the credibility of the questionnaire data. The online survey was conducted in the form of voluntary collection and direct submission, while the offline survey was conducted in a one-on-one, face-to-face manner with visitors, with questionnaires distributed and collected on-site and necessary interviews conducted.
A total of 467 questionnaires were collected in this study, and after excluding invalid questionnaires such as incomplete submissions and obvious logical errors, 452 valid questionnaires were obtained, with an effective rate of 96.79%.

2.4. Methodology

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) is a processing method that can identify the essential structure of multiple observed variables and reduce the dimensionality [40]. It can condense intricate multiple-question items into a few key core factors and is widely used in tourism academic research [41]. This paper applies the exploratory factor analysis method to extract the public factors of the questionnaire and accordingly build a tea culture tourism performance evaluation system consisting of a target layer, constraint layer and indicator layer. A paired-sample t-test was used to analyze and test the data to obtain a table comparing the “importance-performance” differences in tourism performance.
Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) is an analytical method to measure the importance and performance of survey respondents [42]. In this study, IPA analysis is applied to a tourism performance survey, and performance can be regarded as tourists’ evaluation of performance level [43]. Furthermore, we reveal the problematic areas in the development process of the Wushan tea tourism town and provide a summary and discussion.

3. Results

3.1. Descriptive Analysis

A descriptive analysis of the demographic information of the tourists based on the data from the first part of 452 valid questionnaires showed that 242 (53.54%) male tourists and 210 (46.46%) female tourists were interviewed. The age of the interviewed tourists was mainly concentrated between 26 and 55 years old, and the number of young and middle-aged (26–35 years old) interviewed tourists was the largest, at 192 (42.48%). The monthly income level of the tourists interviewed was mainly concentrated in the range of CNY 2500 to 5000, this being the case for 146 people (32.30%). There were 122 (26.99%) visitors with a monthly income of less than 2500 CNY, which may be because the visitors interviewed are mainly students with limited monthly income (living expenses); thus, the middle- and lower-income groups are more predominant. The number of students interviewed was 112 (24.78%), followed by corporate workers, institution workers, self-employed businessmen, and women. The education level of the interviewed visitors was mainly concentrated around college or bachelor’s degree, and their permanent residence was mostly in Xiangyang (local) and surrounding cities.
Regarding the number of visits, it was the first time to come to Wushan tea travel town for 330 (73.01%) of the tourists surveyed, and these data show that the rate that tourists revisit the scenic spot is at a low level; in the trip mode question item, 198 (43.81%) tourists chose to travel freely with friends and relatives; in the most popular tourism activities question item, tea craft (tea picking, tea frying, etc.) was the response that attained the highest frequency. On this trip, 192 (42.48%) tourists spent between 500 and 1000 CNY per capita, and 154 (34.07%) tourists spent less than 500 CNY, indicating that the average travel expenditure of the surveyed tourists was low, and the length of stay of the surveyed tourists was relatively short, mainly between half a day and one day (Table 1).

3.2. Exploratory Factor Analysis

SPSS 26.0 was used to screen, purify and analyze the tourism performance questionnaire data of Wushan tea travel town to build a scientific and reliable tourism performance evaluation system. First, the questionnaire data were analyzed for reliability and validity. The results of the reliability analysis showed that Cronbach’s alpha coefficient reached 0.879, indicating that the internal consistency of the questionnaire indicators was high, and the CITC value of each question item was greater than 0.5, indicating that none of the items could be excluded and that the reliability level was good. The KMO value was 0.816, and the factor sampling appropriateness reached a good level. The approximate chi-square value of Bartlett’s spherical test was 4282.952, which reached a significance level of 0.000 (p < 0.001), indicating that there is a common factor among the variables, and these tourism performance questionnaire data are well-suited for exploratory factor analysis.
Using exploratory factor analysis, the dimensional composition of tourism performance can be determined. The 22 items in the questionnaire were analyzed by principal component analysis to extract public factors, and the number of public factors to be extracted was fixed at 5 according to the experts’ opinions and rotated by the Kaiser normalized maximum variance method. The cumulative variance explanation rate reached 58.941%, indicating that the 5 public factors instead of the 22 specific evaluation indicators can explain nearly 60% of the information of the original indicators, that the degree of explanation is good, and that the retained question items have good structural validity. According to the rotated composition matrix table, combined with the correlation between the original question items, the five extracted public factors are used as the constraint layer and named in order: service quality (SQ), tourism transportation (TT), resource environment (RE), tourism-supporting facilities (TF), and tea tourism products (TP) (Table 2).

3.3. Variance Analysis

The purpose of the analysis of variance is to uncover more valuable research findings. The t-test is the most common mean difference test in questionnaire analysis [34]. There are three types of t-tests, including independent sample t-test, paired sample t-test and single sample t-test, amongst which the paired sample t-test can compare the pairwise relationship between groups. The tea culture tourism performance evaluation system studied in this paper requires a comparison of whether there is a significant difference between the two data (importance-performance) of each group separately, i.e., whether it is applicable to take paired sample t-tests for variance analysis. IPA analysis applied to the study of tourism performance is intended to compare the difference between importance and performance, and the value obtained is a positive number, which means that the performance of the interviewed visitors to the Wushan tea travel town on the specific index is higher than the importance to it; in contrast, a negative number means that the performance of the interviewed tourists to the Wushan tea travel town on the specific index is lower than the importance to it, which is the quantitative embodiment of the tourists’ psychological disparity.
Table 3 demonstrates the mean, mean difference (P-I), t-value, and Sig. value of importance (I) and performance (P) of 22 indicators for the evaluation of tourism performance in Wushan tea tourism town, with a confidence interval percentage of 95%, which can find significant differences in the importance and performance of the surveyed tourists for each measure.
As shown in Table 3, the overall mean value of tourism performance in the Wushan tea tourism town is 3.54, which is an average level. Among them, only tourism performance with tea tourism products (TP) (3.97) exceeds the expected value (3.85) and is higher than the overall average value of performance. Tourism performance with tourism transportation (TT, 3.83) and service quality (SQ, 3.79), although lower than the expected value, is higher than the overall average value of performance, although there is still some room for improvement. The resource environment (RE, 3.41) and tourism-supporting facilities (TF, 2.98) are both lower than the expected value and the overall average value of performance. In addition, tourists have the greatest psychological gap with public toilets and sanitation facilities and have higher expectations for the air quality and natural scenery of Wushan tea travel town, but the realistic performance of the scenic spot does not meet tourists’ psychological expectations.
In addition to the 5 dimensions in the constraint layer, the importance ranking of 22 specific factors in the indicator layer reveals that the 5 factors that tourists subjectively consider most important are convenient service (S1), accessibility (T1), air quality (R2), public restrooms (F4) and natural scenery (R4). However, the P-I values are all negative, and these factors that tourists attach great importance to do not meet their expectations, resulting in the average performance declining. Scenic spots should prioritize improvements for these factors.
The performance ranking was conducted, and it was found that the five factors that tourists subjectively perceived to be the most satisfactory were tea culture characteristics (P2), tea quality (P1), environmental design (R3), park transportation (T2) and professional services (S3). The P-I values of these factors are all positive, and the performance exceeds the psychological expectations of tourists, which is the strength of Wushan tea tourism town.
Comparing the importance with performance, it is found that the five factors with large differences between experience and expectation are public toilets (F4), sanitation facilities (F5), natural scenery (R4), network communication (F3), and air quality (R2), which are the main reasons for the low overall tourism performance. The smaller the P-I value, the worse the experience of tourists is, the further it is from psychological expectations, and the more difficult it is to improve. Nonetheless, the five mountain tea tourism towns should focus on improving the area and need to invest more money and energy toward this.

3.4. IPA Analysis

Based on the above analysis, IPA was adopted to explore the specific influence of 22 individual indicators on the performance of tourists in Wushan tea tourism town. IPA analysis is used to construct four quadrants with the mean importance value and the mean performance value of each indicator, to distribute each indicator in the quadrant matrix according to its specific importance value and performance value, and to interpret and analyze them. The four-quadrant matrix of importance-performance was constructed using the mean value of all importance and performance values of the questionnaire data (4.11, 3.53) as the coordinate origin, the horizontal coordinate as importance, and the vertical coordinate as performance, as shown in Figure 2. Labels 1 to 4 represent indicators S1 to S4, labels 5 to 8 represent T1 to T4, labels 9 to 12 represent R1 to R4, labels 13 to 18 represent I1 to I6, and labels 19 to 22 represent P1 to P4, respectively.
Analysis of the quadrant matrix can intuitively cleave the strengths and weaknesses of the factors affecting the performance of visitors to the Wushan tea tourism town. The four quadrant matrices are quadrant 1, “high importance-high performance” (factors to continue to maintain), quadrant 2, “low importance-high performance” (potential resource advantage), quadrant 3, “low importance-low performance” (factors to be followed up slowly), and quadrant 4, “high importance-low performance” (factors that need to be improved).
As shown in Figure 2, the distribution of the 22 indicators is rather extreme; except for the S1 indicator, the rest of the indicators are distributed in quadrant 2 and quadrant 4. The S1 indicator is whether the scenic service staff can provide convenient services. Tourists think it is very important to obtain convenient services, and the performance of this indicator is also fair, but the scenic area still needs to continue to work hard as a key improvement point to improve the quality of scenic services. The training and improvement of staff service quality are some of the most important issues. Staff service quality training and improvement is an important part of the construction of tourist attractions, and high-quality tourist destinations need to provide tourists with quality tourism services. The staff of Wushan tea travel town should not only have rich tea culture and tourism service expertise, but also have high levels of service skills and enthusiastic service attitudes to create a comfortable and convenient tourism atmosphere for tourists, thus accelerating the “high importance-low performance” factor into a “high importance-high performance” factor.
There are eight factors in quadrant 2, “low importance-high performance”, namely, professional services (S3), business management (S4), park transportation (T2), parking conditions (T3), environmental design (R3), shopping environment (F2), tea quality (P1), and tea culture characteristics (P2). This indicates that Wushan tea travel town has invested more effort in this part of the service, and the performance of tourists is higher, but most tourists currently think that these factors are not very important for the tourism experience, are secondary aspects of the scenic spot to improve the quality of service, and that more energy does not need to be spent on these factors. These factors belong to the potential resources of scenic spots, and if they are transformed into highly important factors, they will greatly enhance tourists’ sense of tourism experience.
There are 13 factors in quadrant 4, “high importance-low performance”, which are being served with a smile (S2), accessibility (T1), trail layout (T4), overall image (R1), air quality (R2), natural scenery (R4), landscape features (F1), network communication (F3), public restrooms (F4), sanitation facilities (F5), tourist service center (F6), tea and tourism activities (P3), and tourist souvenirs (P4). Tourists think the above factors are very important, but after the tour, they do not reach the requisite performance level. These factors are the key to improving the level of service quality in Wushan tea tourism town and need to be improved. It is worth noting that the tourists interviewed think that “public toilets are clean and hygienic” (F4) and “the number and distribution of garbage cans are reasonable” (F5) are extremely important, but the performance level is the lowest among the factors, indicating that the contradiction between toilet and sanitation facility renovation is extremely prominent, and it is the primary consideration for scenic spots to improve the level of service quality. The scenic area needs to plan these factors as the key direction for future improvement; if the development potential is good, they will become an important advantageous resource for the development of Wushan tea travel town and help further improve the performance of tourists.

4. Discussion

In recent years, an increasing number of tourists have picked tea sightseeing, and tea culture tourism activities have become popular, but the high-level, specialized tea culture tourism development model has not yet been established, and the development of tea culture tourism is also stagnant. Combining the results of the different analyses and IPA analyses, we explore the improvement strategy of tea culture tourists’ performance to provide suggestions for the construction of a high-quality tourist destination in Wushan tea tourism town.

4.1. Continuously Consolidate the Tea Culture Characteristics of Tourism Products

The construction and improvement of scenic tourism products is the key to enhancing the attractiveness of tourism [44]. A good resource environment is the basic element of tea culture tourism development, but also the basic dimension of tea culture tourism performance evaluation. The Wushan tea travel town itself has unique natural conditions for tea planting, which provides a good material basis for the formation of the characteristic Wushan tea culture. Around these characteristic tourism resources, Wushan town has formed three unique tourism routes, namely, Taoist tracing tour, idyllic scenery tour, tea color and fragrance tour. It also planned “three zones and one belt” tea theme park, including tea products trade zone (Qiping), tea industry leisure zone (Yanhe), tea culture worship zone (Tianhe), and Tianhe Yanhe. The scenic belt along the river can provide unique tourism products with tea culture characteristics for visitors and achieve the expected tourist performance.

4.2. Interpreting the Connotation of Tea Culture Awareness from a Deeper Level

Tea scenic tourism development to deeply explore the connotation of tea culture awareness. Transforming the beautiful scenery of the ecological tea plantations into a beautiful natural tourism environment, still only in the primary stage of the use of tea resources, inevitably leads to tourism products of tea culture characteristics that are not distinct, and tourism projects lack novelty [45]. In the future development process of tea culture tourism, to further the ideology of tea culture, tea science, tea art, tea painting, tea stories and tea performances should be deeply integrated into the tourism project. To address the tourist demand and consumption psychology of tourists, tea culture tourism products are designed in a personalized, diversified and characteristic way to improve their added value [36].

4.3. Pay Attention to the Construction of Tourism Infrastructure in Tea Scenic Areas

Tourism infrastructure construction includes two major aspects: tourism transportation and tourism-supporting facilities [46]. Tourism transportation is a prerequisite and important guarantee for the smooth development of tourism activities in tourist attractions, and tourism-supporting facilities are the indispensable material basis for tourism development. From the perspective of the external scenic spot, tourism traffic is mainly reflected in the accessibility of the scenic spot; from the perspective of the internal scenic spot, it also includes the accessibility of the scenic spot, the reasonable planning of walking trails, and parking convenience. The convenience of tourism transportation is a key factor influencing tourists’ travel decisions, and the transformation of tea gardens with complex terrain into smooth roads will make it more convenient for tourists to pick tea and participate in sightseeing. Smooth and convenient network communication is a real need for internet users to travel in the current era [47,48]. The performance of tourists with the network communication of Wushan tea travel town is much lower than the expected value. The scenic spot needs to speed up the network information construction of the mountain tea plantations and cover every area with network communication as much as possible to meet the tourists’ psychological demands of sharing the travel experience in real time.

4.4. Accelerating the Implementation of the Tourist Attraction Toilet Revolution

The “toilet revolution” is a key fulcrum with which to pry the service upgrade of tourist attractions and promote the progress of tourism civilization. Data show that the five mountain tea travel towns do not provide tourists with public health service facilities that match their expectations, and there is still much room for improvement in the construction of public health service facilities in scenic spots [49,50]. After years of development of the tourism industry in China, tourism facilities have been greatly improved, but there is still a large gap between the requirements of tourists and international standards of scenic spots, and the status quo of toilets in some tourist attractions in China is still subject to dirty hygiene, disorderly management, poor hardware, inadequate numbers and remote locations. Moreover, the issue of ‘difficult-to-use’ toilets is widespread [51]. With the increase in demand, requirements for public hygiene in tourist destinations continues to rise, and the contradiction of toilets in tourist scenic spots gradually becomes more prominent. The scenic toilet revolution should be oriented to tourists’ needs and should achieve cleanliness and hygiene, effective management, convenience and practicality, sufficient quantity, reasonable numbers [52].

4.5. Rational Planning of Scenic Garbage Cans According to the Actual Situation

Scenic trash cans are ‘increased’ or ‘decreased’ and need to start from the actual scenic spot for long-term planning. Data show that tourists think the number and layout of garbage cans and other sanitation facilities are very important, but the status quo is not up to the standard expected by tourists in general [53,54]. With the popularization of the concept of protecting the natural ecological environment, many natural tourist attractions are gradually reducing the number of garbage cans in the park, intending to become ‘Garbage-free scenic spots’. This practice of tourist attractions has sparked heated debates in society, and tourists who favor this practice believe that eliminating or reducing the number of garbage bins will make tourists spontaneously reduce their garbage output or guide them to carry the garbage generated during the tour with them, practicing the concept of ecotourism, and cultivating good habits of tourists to reduce their garbage output. Opponents believe that the quality of tourists varies, as does the level of understanding of environmental protection awareness. Directly eliminating or reducing the number of trash cans will lead to more tourists throwing trash away, bringing a greater burden to the ecological management of scenic spots. In sum, scenic garbage cans are to either ‘go’ or ‘stay’, and scenic operators should base this decision on their comprehensive management capacity and the actual garbage output for specific analysis.

5. Conclusions

Taking Wushan tea travel town in Xiangyang City as the case site, 452 pieces of tourism performance evaluation data were obtained by questionnaire distribution. The reliability test results were good, and the exploratory factor analysis method was adopted to construct a scientific and reasonable evaluation system of tourists’ performance, including 5 dimensions and 22 specific indicators of service quality (SQ), tourism transportation (TT), resources and environment (RE), tourism-supporting facilities (TF) and tea tourism products (TP), among which the dimension of tea tourism products (TP) is not available for tourists’ performance alongside other types of tourism activities. The results of factor analysis are consistent with the characteristics of tea culture-type tourism activities.
The paired-sample t-test method was used to analyze the variance of 22 pairs of tourism performance evaluation indicators, and the results showed there was a significant difference in the awareness of the importance and performance level of each specific indicator among visitors. The data indicated that the overall tourism performance of Wushan tea tourism town was at an average level. The performance of tea tourism products (TP) is better than average, tourism transportation (TT) and service quality (SQ) have room for improvement, while the resource environment (RE) and tourism-supporting facilities (TF) need to focus on improvement.
Through IPA analysis, the 4-quadrant matrix of “importance-performance” of tourists was drawn to further analyze the potential resource advantages and factors for improving the operation of Wushan tea travel town.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, K.Z.; methodology, K.Z. and Q.Z.; software, K.Z.; validation, K.Z. and Q.Z.; formal analysis, K.Z.; investigation, K.Z. and Q.Z.; resources, K.Z., L.K. and L.D.D.; data curation, K.Z.; writing—original draft preparation, K.Z. and Q.Z.; writing—review and editing, K.Z., L.K. and L.D.D.; visualization, K.Z.; supervision, K.Z.; project administration, K.Z.; funding acquisition, K.Z., L.K. and L.D.D. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by “Special Project of Xiangyang History and Culture for Faculty Research Capacity Development Foundation of Hubei University of Arts and Science (2021kpxy14)”.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Data developed in this study will be made available on request to the corresponding authors.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the John von Neumann University.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

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Sustainability 15 02838 g001 550
Figure 1. The location of the target study area.
Figure 1. The location of the target study area.
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Figure 2. Quadrant matrix of importance-performance of tourists.
Figure 2. Quadrant matrix of importance-performance of tourists.
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Table
Table 1. Demographic characteristics of the samples (N = 452).
Table 1. Demographic characteristics of the samples (N = 452).
ProjectsTypeNumber%ProjectsTypeNumber%
GenderMale24253.54Number of visits1 time33073.01
Female21046.462 times7817.25
AgeUnder 18 years old163.543 times306.64
18–25 years old6815.04More than 3 times143.10
26–35 years old19242.48Outing methodFreedom to travel19843.81
36–55 years old13830.53Self-driving tours8418.58
56–65 years old265.75Travel with a group429.29
Over 65 years old122.66Unit organization11024.34
Monthly incomeUnder 2500 CNY12226.99Other183.98
2500–5000 CNY14632.30Experiential activitiesTea ceremony, tea art7416.37
5001–10,000 CNY11625.66Tea customs, tea songs10022.12
10,000 CNY or more6815.05Tea craft viewing13429.65
CareerBusiness unit staff7616.81Tea food tasting11625.66
Corporate staff8819.47Other286.20
Freelancer429.29Travel expensesLess than 500 CNY15434.07
Individual businesses6414.16500–1000 CNY19242.48
Retirees327.081000–2000 CNY10222.57
Current students11224.78Over 2000 CNY40.88
Other388.41Length of stayHalf day32271.24
Education levelJunior high school and below8418.581 day10823.89
Junior high/high school10222.572 days163.54
College/bachelor’s degree20846.023 days61.33
Master and above5812.83More than 3 days00.00
Table
Table 2. Tea culture tourism performance evaluation system (TS).
Table 2. Tea culture tourism performance evaluation system (TS).
Constraint LevelIndicator LayerFactor LoadEigenvalueAmount of Explained Variation (%)
Service Quality (SQ)Convenient and fast service (S1)0.6943.58816.309
Smiling service (S2)0.755
Professional services (S3)0.698
Commercial management services (S4)0.504
Tourist Transportation (TT)High accessibility (T1)0.5083.19114.503
Convenient transportation (T2)0.485
Parking convenience (T3)0.577
Reasonable road layout (T4)0.633
Resource Environment (RE)Overall image comfort (R1)0.5422.22010.092
High air quality (R2)0.607
Harmonious environmental design (R3)0.690
Natural beauty (R4)0.582
Tourism-Supporting Facilities (TF)Exquisite landscape (F1)0.7812.0539.331
Reasonable layout of shopping environment (F2)0.464
High-quality internet (F3)0.506
Clean public restrooms (F4)0.726
Reasonable number and layout of trash cans (F5)0.735
Complete visitor service center program (F6)0.547
Tea Travel Products (TP)High-quality tea leaves (P1)0.5721.9158.707
Featured tea culture (P2)0.709
Rich tea tourism activities (P3)0.621
Tourist souvenirs with special features (P4)0.689
Table
Table 3. Differential analysis of the importance and performance of tourists in Wushan tea tourism town.
Table 3. Differential analysis of the importance and performance of tourists in Wushan tea tourism town.
DimensionalityIndicatorsImportance (I)Performance (P)P-I Valuet ValueSig.
AverageSortAverageAverageSortAverage
SQS14.47103.953.5493.79−0.9318.8980.000
S24.528 3.1717 −1.3533.7080.000
S33.4416 4.375 0.9317.3350.000
S43.3717* 4.078 0.7011.7220.000
TTT14.7613.923.41113.83−1.3528.4240.000
T23.1822 4.494 1.3132.5480.000
T33.3717* 4.157 0.7816.3320.000
T44.3713 3.2814 −1.0923.1040.000
RER14.4994.323.19163.41−1.3027.7650.000
R24.752 3.3112 −1.4438.4050.000
R33.3120 4.503 1.1924.8450.000
R44.714 2.6220 −2.0943.3820.000
TFF14.39124.393.08182.98−1.3129.3250.000
F23.5515 4.196 0.649.0230.000
F34.617 2.6719 −1.9433.4690.000
F44.743 2.3621 −2.3851.5600.000
F54.645 2.2722 −2.3751.2980.000
F64.4011 3.2913 −1.1121.8410.000
TPP13.34193.854.5623.971.2229.9970.000
P23.2821 4.641 1.3633.1850.000
P34.626 3.2515 −1.3733.3160.000
P44.1414 3.4310 −0.7111.9160.000
Overall Mean Value 4.11 3.54−0.57
Note: 17* is a tie for 17th place in the order of importance.
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Zhou, Q.; Zhu, K.; Kang, L.; Dávid, L.D. Tea Culture Tourism Perception: A Study on the Harmony of Importance and Performance. Sustainability 2023, 15, 2838. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032838

AMA Style

Zhou Q, Zhu K, Kang L, Dávid LD. Tea Culture Tourism Perception: A Study on the Harmony of Importance and Performance. Sustainability. 2023; 15(3):2838. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032838

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Zhou, Quan, Kai Zhu, Ling Kang, and Lóránt Dénes Dávid. 2023. "Tea Culture Tourism Perception: A Study on the Harmony of Importance and Performance" Sustainability 15, no. 3: 2838. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032838

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