• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.8
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• pp.151-159
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• 2020

This study aims to determine the factors influencing the community behavior in improving competitive rural tourism as well as understanding the role of economic literacy in mediating socio-economic indicators and rural competitive advantage. This research followed an explanatory research to examine the relationship between variables including socio-economic variables and rural tourism competitive advantage. The data was gathered by conducting observations and interviews with tourism businesses, stakeholders, and the local village government, and related agencies as respondents. Furthermore, the data were analyzed following inductive and descriptive statistics. The findings indicated that, from all variables used, solely the environmental impact variable did not affect economic literacy and the competitive advantage of rural tourism. The moderating variables showed that the economic literacy mediates the economic impact on rural tourism competitive advantage. In addition, socio-cultural impacts on rural competitive advantage tourism, and the stakeholder involvement affects rural competitive advantage tourism. However, economic literacy failed in mediating between environmental impacts on rural competitive advantage tourism. This is due to the increasing understanding of the economy of the community around the tourist attractions it will increase the business around the tourist attractions that have an impact on environmental damage around the tourist attractions.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.141-152
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• 2016

The role of rural towns as a leisure space has recently been increasing with changes in the consumption trends in domestic tourism. Based on the tourists visiting the town of Sunheul-ri, Jocheon-eup, a rural Village in Jeju Island, this study categorized the market according to the images formed by the tourists of rural towns, and analyzed the preferred mode of participation in rural field activities for each category. We analyzed the characteristic factors of the images of rural tourism formed by the tourists, extracted three factors for cluster analysis, and then formed three groups: "Group of Rural Experience Activity" "Group of Rural Environment and Service" and "Group of Rest in the Rural" After analyzing the preferred activity in each image-category group, we found no significant differences among the groups in ordinary activities such as viewing the scenery, experiencing and learning about the natural environment, and culinary experiences. However, there were significant differences among the groups regarding participation in experiential tour programs with the purpose of active tourism. The "Group of Rural Experience Activity" sought to actively participate in various activity programs, whereas the "Group of Rest in the Rural" comparatively had a weaker preference for such active programs. We thus learnt that tourists' preferred activities are different according to the types of images formed by the tourists visiting rural towns. Therefore, to strengthen the competitive advantage of the rural tourist destinations of Jeju Island, it is necessary to provide various activity programs that are appropriate for the rural regions of Jeju and to accord with the expectations associated with each market segment category by positioning the programs according to the characteristics of the images held by the tourists.