For the rural idyll:Tourism,place promotion and rural consumption
Place promotion plays an important role in enhancing the attractiveness and competi-tiveness of a place.The existing studies,however,have focused on the field of urban areas and small towns,and relatively little attention has been paid to the rural areas,especially in promot-ing the rural nature rather than the historical and cultural heritage.In addition,limited scholar-ship has investigated the evaluation of place promotion,increasingly making a call to examine the circuit of production and consumption of place image in the actions of place promotion.Taking Xixinan village in Huangshan city,China as a case study,this paper thus comprehen-sively uses qualitative methods to analyze the construction and communication of place image in such a rural tourism destination,as well as tourists'perception,consumption and feedback of the projected place image.It is found that the local government,centered on the natural land-scape of the maple poplar forest,takes advantage of the local ecological environment to con-struct the image of the'Wizard of Oz'and actively promote it,marketing it as a romantic place myth.Essentially,the place image of'The Wizard of Oz'is a version of rural idyll,in which such seductive place promotion caters to people's escape from urban modernity,as well as nos-talgia for the countryside.Through the analysis of embodied consumption,it is further found that tourists'consumption behavior and feelings are in line with the setting of rural idyll con-structed by the local government,and they show corresponding nuanced characteristics in phys-ical sense,cognition and emotion.Meanwhile,it is also argued that it is not limited to the scope of the previous discourse of place promotion.Tourists'embodied experience reveals their posi-tivity and agency,making sense in the construction of their subjective meaning and the con-sumption of place.Under the premise of successful place promotion,tourists'rural consump-tion behavior is able to be fed back to the next round of tourism production,further shaping the rurality of the'Wizard of Oz'in Xixinan village.By doing so,the consumption of tourists rein-forces the representation of the previously established tourist landscape discourse.This paper contributes to the academic debate of'clarifying the conceptual confusion between place pro-motion and place marketing and advancing relevant empirical research'.Further,it advances the empirical research agenda of'circuits of tourism'proposed by Irena Ateljevic by placing the geographical process of this framework in a rural context,and discussing the production and consumption of tourism on the rurality.In practice,this paper provides planning guidance for rural tourism marketing and tourism experience creation.
place promotionruralityrural idyllplace imageconsumptionembodimentcir-cuits of tourism
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