EAPSI: Exploring Agro-Tourism and Urban-Rural Connections in Rural Beijing

Weller Nicholas A, Tempe AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Studying city growth using satellite images or city-wide economic data neglects the connections among urban and rural areas, how people make a living, and how people interact with each other. For example, agro-tourism enterprises use farms and orchards for tourism-related activities, such as picnicking and 'you-pick' fruit, and not for growing and selling crops. From satellite images, agro-tourism enterprises look like farms and in city-wide economic data, they look like hotels or other attractions. These approaches mask agro-tourism's complex socio-economic and ecological roles. As part of a larger collaboration with urban ecology expert Dr. Weiqi Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Research Center for Eco-Environmental Services, this award will support interviews with agro-tourism enterprise owners in the Yanqi Valley of North Beijing about how they use the Yanqi River, why they started their enterprise, and their use of the internet to market to urban residents. This study will inform policy related to tourism and internet access and their role as development tools by studying the connections between urban and rural landscapes, residents, and enterprises and the use of the internet by rural enterprises. It will also improve understanding of urban-rural transition dynamics in one of the most rapidly changing urbanizing areas of the world. This study utilizes the 'Continuum of Urbanity' a framework proposed by Boone et al. in 2013. It consists of four components: livelihoods, lifestyles, place, and connectivity. An area's 'urban-ness' varies based on these four components. Two hypotheses will be tested. The first is that internet access allowed tourism-based enterprises in the Yanqi Valley to attract customers from urban Beijing and allowed for interactions between urban Beijing and Yanqi Valley residents via social media. This change in connectivity led to growth of tourism-based livelihoods and ultimately to changes in place. The second hypothesis is that 1) agro-tourism in the Yanqi Valley developed via both top-down pressures, such as agricultural policy, and bottom-up pressures, such as demand from urban residents; and 2) agro-tourism development has uniquely impacted livelihoods, lifestyles, connectivity, and place in the Yanqi Valley. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.