Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Yanling Huang, Ph.D. Professor; research interests include tourism psychology and behavior, leisure tourism, and hotel management.

Xiang (Robert) Li, Ph.D. is a professor and Chair of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Temple University. Robert's research mainly focuses on destination marketing and tourist behavior, with emphases on international destination branding, customer loyalty, and tourism in Asia.

Min Feng, a graduate student at Guangzhou College of Technology and Business； research interests include rural tourism

Abstract (150 Words)

Understanding the role of tourism in poverty reduction and livelihood capital from a person-centered perspective is essential to the sustainable development of rural ethnic areas. This paper selected the core components of the sustainable livelihood framework to construct an evaluation index system and then provided specific indicator and evaluative criteria. The study took villages in China’s Longji Rice Terraces—a globally renowned agricultural heritage system—as focal cases. The entropy weight method and grey relational analysis were adopted to evaluate inhabitants’ livelihood capital to reflect the sustainability of the area’s livelihood through a micro lens. The study makes several important findings/contributions: First, it develops a set of evaluation criteria for sustainable livelihood in a tourism context including five capitals and 21 indicators. Second, local inhabitants benefit from tourism development, diversifying livelihood options. Third, farmers’ livelihood does not improve uniformly as time passing by; endogenous development should be therefore taken into concern. Final, some suggestions are provided.

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Livelihood Capital, Poverty Reduction, and Sustainable Development in Ethnic Tourism Destinations ---The Case of Longji Villages, China

Understanding the role of tourism in poverty reduction and livelihood capital from a person-centered perspective is essential to the sustainable development of rural ethnic areas. This paper selected the core components of the sustainable livelihood framework to construct an evaluation index system and then provided specific indicator and evaluative criteria. The study took villages in China’s Longji Rice Terraces—a globally renowned agricultural heritage system—as focal cases. The entropy weight method and grey relational analysis were adopted to evaluate inhabitants’ livelihood capital to reflect the sustainability of the area’s livelihood through a micro lens. The study makes several important findings/contributions: First, it develops a set of evaluation criteria for sustainable livelihood in a tourism context including five capitals and 21 indicators. Second, local inhabitants benefit from tourism development, diversifying livelihood options. Third, farmers’ livelihood does not improve uniformly as time passing by; endogenous development should be therefore taken into concern. Final, some suggestions are provided.