Research on the Motivation Mechanism of Precise Poverty Alleviation in Rural Tourism in China

Abstract

The practice of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism in China generally faces the contradiction of “abundant exogenous motivation and insufficient endogenous motivation”, which seriously affects the effect of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to clarify the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism. This paper tries to borrow the force analysis method of the slope model in physics, constructs a general theoretical model of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, and compares and analyzes the characteristics of the models of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism under two different models: government-led and community-led practice. On this basis, through a case analysis of the generating and evolution process of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism in Liangjiahe village, Yanchuan County, Shaanxi Province, which is a typical example of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism in China, we propose a new model of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism under the mode of tourism empowerment. The study has some theoretical insights to clarify the dynamic operation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, promote the sustainability of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, and realize an effective connection between precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism and rural revitalization in China.

1. Introduction

Sustainable development (SD) is the common target of human society, and alleviating poverty is one of the most important goals of sustainable development [1]. As the world’s most populous developing country, China has long been plagued by the problem of poverty. China’s poverty alleviation practice has experienced an arduous and long road. Since China’s reform and opening up, and especially since the 18th Chinese Congress of the Communist Party of China, China has made historic achievements in poverty alleviation, successively lifting more than 700 million poor people out of poverty, contributing more than 70% to global poverty reduction, and becoming the first developing country in the world to achieve the poverty reduction target of the UN Millennium Development Goals [2].

Poor areas in China are mostly located in such rural areas as mountainous regions, ethnic areas, old revolutionary areas, and border areas, which are usually not at a high level of socio-economic development due to their geographical isolation. However, many poor areas have rich natural, cultural, and social tourism resources [3,4,5,6], thus forming a natural basis for developing rural tourism. Additionally, rural tourism is characterized by offering many employment opportunities, a low participation threshold, low environmental pollution. For poor villages with a large surplus labor force and low education levels, a relatively fragile ecological environment. Tourism is a major strategy to escape poverty and achieve sustainable development [7,8].

Due to the important role of tourism in poverty alleviation, since the practice of poverty alleviation started in China, many poor areas with certain tourism development foundations and conditions have adopted tourism poverty alleviation as a major form of poverty alleviation [9]. Since the implementation of China’s precise poverty alleviation strategy in 2013 in particular, tourism-precise poverty alleviation, as a typical form of industrial poverty alleviation, has made a significant contribution to the comprehensive realization of the task of poverty eradication in China. According to the relevant data, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, tourism is expected to lift 12 million people out of poverty, accounting for about 17% of China’s poor population [10]. This is clearly a huge systemic project [11,12] that requires the cooperation of tourism stakeholders at all levels of government, poor residents, tourism enterprises, and NGOs to accomplish. Practice has shown that China has won the battle against poverty in a relatively short period of time, precisely by mobilizing the whole society to participate in precise poverty alleviation.

However, from the perspective of sustainable development, China’s precise poverty alleviation strategy still faces huge challenges, specifically in the field of tourism poverty alleviation. On one hand, the risk of returning to poverty is still high for the poor areas that are just at the primary level of tourism development. On the other hand, China has focused on solving the problem of absolute poverty during the 13th Five-Year Plan, while relative poverty is still prominent. How to keep residents out of poverty while continuing to participate in rural tourism without returning to poverty, and how to make more relatively poor residents gradually participate in rural tourism development to become rich are difficult tasks that China faces in terms of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in the future. The above two challenges not only seriously affect the sustainability of China’s tourism-precise poverty alleviation, but may also affect the effective connection between China’s tourism-precise poverty alleviation strategy and rural revitalization strategy.

In order to address the above challenges in the practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in China, it is necessary to reflect on how to achieve sustainability in terms of tourism-precise poverty alleviation at the theoretical level. Additionally, the key to the sustainability of tourism-precise poverty alleviation is whether the motivation mechanism of tourism-precise poverty alleviation is effective. What are the power sources of tourism-precise poverty alleviation? What is the role of each of these power in tourism-precise poverty alleviation? Additionally, how do the different powers interact with each other to promote the practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation? The theoretical discussion of these questions is not only helpful to discover the important powers affecting tourism-precise poverty alleviation, but also helps to clarify the interaction mechanism between tourism-precise poverty alleviation powers and to find the tourism-precise poverty alleviation paths suitable for the Chinese context.

Motivation mechanisms, as a core issue in the field of tourism poverty alleviation research, have long received attention from researchers. Foreign researchers realized early that a reasonable tourism poverty alleviation mechanism is an important way to ensure that poor people benefit from tourism development [13]. Researchers focused on paying more attention to the right of community participation in local tourism development and management, and its effectiveness has been verified in poverty alleviation practices in Namibia [14] and Zambia [15]. Chinese researchers have also recognized that to fundamentally solve the problem of tourism-precise poverty alleviation, the key lies in finding the various power sources, coordinating various interests, and mobilizing the enthusiasm of all parties involved, thus forming a benign tourism poverty alleviation power mechanism [16,17]. However, compared with foreign countries, Chinese researchers have paid more attention to the role of governments than poor residents at all levels in tourism-precise poverty alleviation. The fundamental reason for this is that China’s tourism poverty alleviation strategy has mainly adopted a “government-led” model.

By relying on the strong mobilization ability of the government, poor areas can undoubtedly succeed in achieving poverty alleviation in a relatively short period of time. However, due to the dominant position of the government in tourism-precise poverty alleviation, most poor residents are always in a passive position in tourism-precise poverty alleviation, with little awareness of active poverty alleviation and insufficient endogenous motivation. This gives the practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in China the common problem of “abundant exogenous motivation but insufficient endogenous motivation”, which seriously affects the sustainability of tourism-precise poverty alleviation and the effective connection between tourism-precise poverty alleviation strategies and rural revitalization strategies. Therefore, there is an urgent need to construct a theoretically appropriate mechanism to ensure the sustainability of tourism-precise poverty alleviation based on the practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in China.

A large number of studies have found that although poverty in rural areas usually manifests itself as economic poverty at the material level, information poverty [18], and cultural poverty [19] at the spiritual level, it ultimately stems from rights poverty [20]. Thus, for poor areas with certain tourism development foundations and conditions that are suitable for rural tourism development, tourism empowerment in the process of precise poverty alleviation can truly stimulate the endogenous motivation of poor residents to move out of poverty, improve the self-development ability of poor residents, and then enhance the precise poverty alleviation of rural tourism’s effects [21,22,23,24,25,26,27].

Based on the above practical background and theoretical tracing, this paper takes precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism as the research subject. It takes the main contradiction of “abundant exogenous motivation and insufficient endogenous motivation” as the entry point, takes the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism as the research problem, and borrows the force analysis method of the slope model in physics. Firstly, it constructs a general theoretical model of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, and compares and analyzes the characteristics of the model of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism under the two different modes: government-led and community-led practice. On this basis, through a case analysis of the generating and evolution process of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism in Liangjiahe village, Yanchuan County, Shaanxi Province, which is a typical example of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism in China, the paper constructs an improved model of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism. The study is expected to theoretically clarify the motivation mechanism and evolutionary characteristics of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, and to offer theoretical insights into the practice of tourism boosting relative poverty alleviation in the post-poverty era in China, in order to provide an empirical reference for the implementation of tourism poverty alleviation practice in developing countries worldwide.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Tourism Poverty Alleviation and Tourism-Precise Poverty Alleviation

The earliest foreign studies on tourism and anti-poverty can be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s in tourism impact studies [28] such as the role of tourism in promoting macroeconomic development and regional employment [29]. Subsequently, studies on the profitability of poor people in tourism development and the role of tourism in poverty reduction have mainly focused on the community as a whole, with insufficient attention being paid to the specific targets of poverty so that the claims of disadvantaged people are often ignored [30].

In 1999, the Department For International Development (DFID) put forward the concept of PPT (pro-poor tourism) in the report of the Commission on Sustainable Development, which described the idea that through the development of tourism, the net economic, social, and cultural benefits of the population in poor areas can be increased [3]. In 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in South Africa, the World Tourism Organization (WTO) proposed another concept of poverty alleviation, ST-EP. ST-EP represents a method of achieving poverty eradication that relies on sustainable tourism development planning and projects [31], the core of which is to use sustainable tourism as a means to combat poverty and to address the social, cultural, environmental, and other negative issues arising from tourism development, and to ultimately achieve regional poverty eradication and economic development by providing start-up funds for tourism poverty alleviation demonstration projects and strengthening research on sustainable tourism and poverty reduction. Compared to ST-EP, which focuses on environmental issues in major destinations, PPT focuses on poverty issues in developing countries. Therefore, PPT has become the main concept, principle, and approach to poverty eradication through tourism in the current international context [32].

Research on tourism poverty alleviation in China emerged in the 1990s, along with a summary of practical experience in tourism poverty alleviation and, in 1991, the Guizhou Provincial Tourism Bureau in China pioneered the slogan of “tourism poverty alleviation”, which has been applied with remarkable success [33]. However, at the beginning of the practice of tourism poverty alleviation in China, the target of tourism poverty alleviation was aimed at poorer areas than their people, and more attention was often paid to the macro benefits brought by tourism development than to the poor population and their development [34]. Although the connotation of tourism poverty alleviation in China is close to the concept of PPT, there are some differences between them in terms of their theoretical bases, objectives, and implementation subjects. The theoretical basis of the concept of PPT is development economics, while the theoretical basis of tourism poverty alleviation in China is the general economic growth theory. The objective of PPT is to achieve comprehensive benefits for the poor population, while tourism poverty alleviation in China is mainly concerned with the economic growth of poor regions. The implementation subject of PPT is NGOs (non-governmental organizations) or specialized agencies, while the implementation subject of tourism poverty alleviation in China is government agencies [35]. With the continuous promotion of tourism poverty alleviation in China and the analysis and research of new issues in the process of tourism poverty alleviation, China’s tourism poverty alleviation has also absorbed some advantages of the PPT strategy, such as focusing on the comprehensive development of the poor population [36], the ecological benefits of poor areas [37], community participation [38], and tourism empowerment [39] in tourism poverty alleviation.

In 2013, China put forward the strategy of precise poverty alleviation. In this context, the State Council of China formally proposed to “strengthen rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation” in the Opinions on Promoting Tourism Industry Reform issued in 2014. Tourism-precise poverty alleviation is the specific application of the concept of precise poverty alleviation in the field of tourism poverty alleviation. Tourism-precise poverty alleviation is a kind of poverty alleviation approach that uses scientific and effective procedures and methods to precisely identify, precisely help, and precisely manage tourism poverty alleviation targets, in order to achieve the goal of tourism poverty alleviation “helping real poverty” and “real poverty alleviation” [34]. With the promotion of the concept of tourism-precise poverty alleviation, Chinese scholars have gradually focused on the target and objectives of tourism poverty alleviation at the regional level to the poverty population level, and have comprehensively explored the concepts [34], mechanisms [40], models [41], paths [42,43], and effects [44,45] of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation.

2.2. The Power Source of Precise Poverty Alleviation in Rural Tourism

Rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation is a huge system project, and its realization cannot be achieved without the joint efforts of the whole society. Therefore, the implementation process of tourism-precise poverty alleviation is a process of joint participation and collaboration of multiple subjects [34]. According to the stakeholder theory, rural tourism involves many relevant interest subjects such as local government, community residents, tourists, tourism enterprises, NGOs, etc. Although these interest subjects play different roles in the development of rural tourism, they all become indispensable forces to promote the development of rural tourism in a place. Therefore, in the practice of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation, these interest subjects promoting rural tourism development must also become the main source of power for precise poverty alleviation. In this regard, scholars bear the same view that the driving factors of tourism poverty alleviation mainly include the government, the poor population, tourism enterprises, tourists, social organizations, and international organizations [46,47,48,49,50,51], that jointly promote the occurrence and development of tourism poverty alleviation. The rural poor populations are the objects of tourism-precise poverty alleviation, while other stakeholders such as the government, enterprises, tourists, and NGOs, constitute the main body of tourism-precise poverty alleviation, and they jointly become the driving force of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation. The difference lies in that scholars differ in their perceptions of the role of different power sources in rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation.

The government is one of the important power sources of tourism poverty alleviation. Foreign PPT case studies show that the government plays an important role in the practice of tourism poverty alleviation, concentrating on the construction of regulations, the formulation of policies, the establishment of funds, and the design of systems [52]. In the current tourism-precise poverty alleviation system in the Chinese countryside, the government occupies a central position and plays an important role, mainly in tourism development planning, infrastructure construction, providing public goods and services, formulating investment attraction policies and financing orientation, improving and strengthening management systems, educating and supervising environmental protection, improving regulations, stimulating other organizational forces to participate in poverty alleviation and development, assisting tourism-related enterprises in market research and marketing efforts, etc. [53,54]. However, the existing tourism-precise poverty alleviation practices in China rely too much on government leadership and the roles of other stakeholders are weakened, resulting in the insufficient sustainability of tourism-precise poverty alleviation. In the future, the government should gradually change its functions, pay attention to the participation status of other stakeholders, and play more of a collaborative supporting role [55].

The poor population is both the object of tourism-precise poverty alleviation and one of the important power sources of tourism-precise poverty alleviation. On one hand, the poor population, as the group that is receiving help, needs support. On the other hand, as the power source of poverty alleviation, they are also the driving force of tourism poverty alleviation. The role of poor people in tourism-precise poverty alleviation is mainly manifested in enhancing their own self-assistant awareness, providing local folk culture products and services, participating in local tourism planning and development, participating in ecological and cultural protection, actively participating in employment development, and striving to improve their self-capacity and quality [56]. However, the role of poor people in tourism-precise poverty alleviation is affected by many factors, among which the lack of capital limits the depth and breadth of poor people’s participation in tourism-precise poverty alleviation. In particular, the lack of social capital reduces the ability of poor residents to participate in tourism poverty alleviation. The lack of physical capital (mainly capital and infrastructure) restricts the development of rural tourism, which in turn reduces the opportunities for poor residents to participate in tourism poverty alleviation. The lack of human capital reduces the ability of poor residents to participate in tourism poverty alleviation. On the one hand, due to the population-siphoning effect of cities and towns, there is an exodus of highly educated residents from poor villages, which means that rural tourism lacks the necessary intellectual support for precise poverty alleviation. On the other hand, as most poor people have a low level of education and weak learning ability, they do not have a deep understanding of rural tourism and lack basic tourism service skills. This seriously affects tourism-precise poverty alleviation [57]. Therefore, to optimize the role of poor residents in tourism-precise poverty alleviation, it is necessary to appropriately empower the poor residents, strengthen their education and training, stimulate their endogenous motivation to abolish poverty, and enhance their self-development ability [58].

Tourism enterprises are likewise one of the main power sources of tourism-precise poverty alleviation and are catalysts for tourism poverty alleviation elements, providing mainly technical and financial support for the development of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in poor areas [59]. Community tourism enterprises, in particular, play a significant role in tourism poverty alleviation [60], contributing to local socio-economic development and enhancing the participation of local communities in tourism poverty alleviation [61].

In poverty alleviation practices, NGOs are usually oriented to the most concerning needs of the poor. They can provide special support in terms of financial, material, technical, human resources, and public opinion for tourism poverty alleviation, and also play an important role in guiding the poor to participate in tourism poverty alleviation [34]. In comparison, foreign countries pay more attention to the role of NGOs in tourism poverty alleviation, and the role of Chinese NGOs in tourism-precise poverty alleviation is still relatively limited [62].

In addition, tourists, as the driving force of tourism market demand, are an important part of the tourism poverty alleviation system, and their satisfaction with tourism products and services directly determines the state of tourism development in poor areas. Tourists can help tourism poverty alleviation by purchasing and consuming handicrafts, local products and services provided by poor people, promoting tourism through word-of-mouth strategy in poor areas, providing material and financial donations to poor people, advising on the construction of poor areas, and carrying out responsible tourism activities [56].

2.3. Motivation Mechanism of Precise Poverty Alleviation in Rural Tourism

The motivation mechanism of tourism-precise poverty alleviation refers to the generating mechanism of the power necessary to promote the occurrence and development of rural tourism poverty alleviation development, as well as the maintenance and improvement of the mechanism of action of various economic relations, organizational systems, etc., constituted by the sum of the integrated system [63], mainly by the government, local residents, tourism enterprises, tourists, NGOs, and other power factors of mutual influence, mutual constraints, and joint efforts to promote the formation.

Foreign recognition of the importance of the motivation mechanism of tourism poverty alleviation has a long history. Meyer D proposed a framework for enhancing the benefits of local communities from tourism development, and the framework strengthened the linkages between tourism and local poor communities in response to serious tourism leakage during tourism development in some parts of South Africa [64]. Rogerson C suggested a mechanism to promote the integration of agriculture and tourism in tourism destinations by improving the poverty alleviation effect of tourism [13].

Chinese scholars’ research on the motivation mechanism of tourism poverty alleviation is mainly conducted from two perspectives. Some scholars point out from the perspective of the tourism market that the motivation mechanism of tourism poverty alleviation should be improved through the supply, demand, and marketing of tourism products [65]. Tourism products are the basis of tourism industry development, and consumers’ demand for tourism products will give impetus to tourism poverty alleviation. At the same time, due to the strong correlation of tourism products, it has a positive pulling force with regard to tourism poverty alleviation. Marketing plays an important role in promoting the two links of expanding market demand and promoting market supply. Other scholars argued from the perspective of tourism poverty alleviation subjects that the motivation mechanism of tourism poverty alleviation should be constructed by governments, enterprises, and communities [66]. Since most poor areas in China are still dominated by the government-led tourism poverty alleviation model, the government’s role in guiding and making decisions in poverty alleviation is particularly crucial, and enterprises and communities, which are also the main subjects of poverty alleviation, are also crucial for the efficiency enhancement and sustainable development of tourism poverty alleviation. Therefore, the government, enterprises, and communities are the direct driving force for the development of tourism poverty alleviation.

In contrast, foreign countries pay more attention to the main role played by poor residents and NGOs and other relevant interest subjects in the operation of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation mechanism, while in China, government pays attention to rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation at all levels. In the short term, government-led rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation is effective, but due to the over-emphasis on the promotion of exogenous dynamics, while ignoring the stimulation of endogenous dynamics, it tends to result in unsustainable tourism-precise poverty alleviation.

3. The Construction of the Model of Motivation Mechanism of Precise Poverty Alleviation in Rural Tourism

3.1. General Theoretical Model of Motivation Mechanism of Precise Poverty Alleviation in Rural Tourism

In order to explain the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, the process of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism can be likened to the process of poor residents pulling a cart while climbing a slope, since precise poverty alleviation emphasizes “precisely to the household and to help the person”. This paper takes a single poor resident with working ability as the research object. For the convenience of analysis, the image of a poor resident pulling a cart is simplified into a square (as shown in Figure 1), and we try to explain it by the force analysis method of the slope model in physics.

In Figure 1, it is assumed that the inclination angle “α” of the slope indicates the overall difficulty of poverty alleviation in poor areas, the height “h” of the slope indicates the national poverty line standard, the weight “G” of the square indicates the poverty degree of the poor residents, the bottom roughness “μ” of the square indicates the inertia of the poor residents moving out of poverty, and the forces on the poor residents in the process of tourism-precise poverty alleviation are simplified as the tension “F” and resistance “f”. “F” refers to the synergy formed by the joint action of government, tourism enterprises, tourists, NGOs, and other stakeholders to help poor residents and the self-development of poor residents, and “f” refers to the combined force of resistance generated by the level of economic and social development, infrastructure, the difficulty of poverty eradication, the poverty level of poor residents, education level, and inertia of poor residents in poor areas.

Here, assume that:

F = F_g + F_en + F_t + F_n + F_p

(1)

F_g represents the tension of government to precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, F_en represents the tension of enterprises to precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, F_t represents the tension of tourists to precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, F_n represents the tension of NGOs to precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, and F_p represents the endogenous motivation of poor residents to abolish poverty themselves.

For the convenience of analysis, the problem is simplified here by assuming that the combined forces of tourism-precise poverty alleviation are a simple sum of the tension of the government, tourism enterprises, tourists, NGOs, and poor residents. In practice, the main interests of the above stakeholders in the process of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism are often different, and F is likely to be a nonlinear function of the above tension.

Here, assume that:

f = μGcosα + Gsinα

(2)

For the convenience of analysis, the problem is similarly simplified here, assuming that the resistance to precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism mainly comes from external resistance caused by objective conditions such as local infrastructure conditions, the difficulty of poverty eradication, poverty level, and internal resistance caused by subjective conditions such as poor residents’ education level and inertia of poverty eradication. In practice, the resistance to poverty alleviation may also include external resistance from local governments and tourism enterprises’ “false poverty alleviation” behavior, and internal resistance from poor residents’ “moral hazard” and “adverse selection” behavior in the process of tourism-precise poverty alleviation.

Then, theoretically, only when the tension of F is greater than the resistance of f, the cube will move forward, and the poor residents may continue to climb the slope and eventually achieve poverty alleviation. In practice, China’s traditional poverty alleviation in rural tourism is more concerned with macro-level regional economic growth rather than focusing on the micro-level benefits to the poor [67]. This “flooding” type of tourism-precise poverty alleviation has a very high cost but low efficiency as a result of individual poor residents, and the external tension of tourism poverty alleviation is very small. In addition, traditional poverty alleviation in rural tourism focuses more on “blood transfusion” and neglects “blood creation”, which leads to a lack of endogenous motivation for individual poor residents to rely on their own ability to achieve tourism poverty alleviation, and thus the combined force of the two is less than the resistance to poverty alleviation. This is also the fundamental reason why although China has been implementing poverty alleviation strategies for a long time, there are still tens of millions of poor residents who remain in poverty. During China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, China’s implementation of a precise poverty alleviation strategy is mindful of the shortcomings of traditional tourism poverty alleviation strategies, focusing on both “precise drip irrigation” and “blood transfusion”, which increases the tension of poor residents out of poverty through tourism, and when this tension is greater than the resistance of tourism poverty alleviation, poor residents will have the possibility of tourism poverty alleviation. In other words, in the process of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, it is only when the tension is greater than the resistance that the precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism be sustainable, at which point rural revitalization on the basis of poverty alleviation can gradually be realized.

Clearly, all other elements being equal, the greater the weight G of the cube, the greater the Gsinα, indicating the deeper the poverty of the poor residents and the greater the resistance to poverty alleviation. The greater the roughness μ of the bottom of the square, the greater the μGcosα, indicating that the inertia of poor residents in moving out of poverty is greater and the resistance to poverty alleviation is greater. The greater the inclination angle α of the slope, the more difficult it is to abolish poverty in a poor area.

To further simplify the problem, the tension F of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism is divided into external tension F_e and internal tension F_i, and the resistance f is divided into external resistance f_e and internal resistance f_i. Among them, the external tension F_e mainly refers to the combined efforts of stakeholders such as the government, tourism enterprises, tourists, and NGOs, to help poor residents, and the internal tension F_i mainly refers to the endogenous motivation of poor residents to develop themselves. The external resistance f_e mainly refers to the resistance generated by objective factors such as the difficulty of poverty eradication in poor areas and the poverty degree of poor residents, while the internal resistance f_i mainly refers to the resistance generated by subjective factors such as the education level of poor residents and the lazy who are thinking of “waiting for something to happen”.

F_e = F_g + F_en + F_t + F_n

(3)

F_i = F_p

(4)

f_e = Gsina

(5)

f_i = μGcosα

(6)

The above is a general theoretical model of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism based on the force analysis method of the slope model in physics, which can be used as a theoretical explanation of the transformation of China’s poverty alleviation strategy from “rough poverty alleviation” to “precise poverty alleviation”. However, in the practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in China, the mode of tourism-precise poverty alleviation is bound to vary due to the differences in geographic location, tourism resource endowment, tourism development foundation and conditions, tourism life cycle, poverty status and degree, and the implementation and effectiveness of national poverty alleviation policies in poor areas. Among them, the poor villages in the introduction stage of the life cycle of tourism places within the national strategic time limit of precise poverty alleviation, due to the relatively backward ideology of poor residents and the general lack of tourism management skills and management capabilities, the implementation of “government-led” tourism-precise poverty alleviation model has almost become an inevitable choice. Of course, for poor villages that are in the growth or maturity stage of the tourism life cycle and where the local government or outside enterprises play a leading role in community tourism development, this model is equally applicable, only with relatively less pressure to alleviate poverty. For the poor villages in the growth or maturity stage of the tourism life cycle and the local residents playing a leading role in the development of community tourism, under the guidance of the national policy of precise poverty alleviation and relying on the self-governance system or tourism management organization of the poor villages, it is sufficient to realize the tourism poverty alleviation of the local poor residents, and this “community-led” model of tourism-precise poverty alleviation is not the mainstream in China presently, but it is an effective and sustainable tourism poverty alleviation mode. In the following section, we take “government-led” and “community-led” as examples of two relatively representative models of poverty alleviation to analyze the evolutionary characteristics of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism under each model.

3.2. The Model of Motivation Mechanism of Precise Poverty Alleviation in Rural Tourism under the Government-Led Model

During China’s 13th Five-Year Plan period, China’s precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism generally adopts the “government-led” model, where the local government plays a leading role in identifying the poor, formulating tourism support measures, and assessing poverty alleviation performance, while the poor residents, who are the targets of tourism poverty alleviation, play a passive role, as is shown by the fact that poor residents who want to escape poverty through tourism may not be able to participate in tourism activities, while those who participate in tourism poverty alleviation may be not poor, may be not willing to escape poverty through tourism, or may lack the skills or ability to escape poverty through tourism. The reason for the above phenomenon is that the poor residents are always in the role of passive participation in the process of tourism-precise poverty alleviation, lacking the initiative to participate in tourism. The disadvantage of this is that it is not conducive to cultivating the self-development ability of poor residents in tourism poverty alleviation, and stimulating the endogenous motivation of poor residents in tourism poverty alleviation but may increase the resource input of national tourism-precise poverty alleviation and reduce the effect of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, particularly affecting the sustainability of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism.

According to Figure 2, the implementation of the government-led model must ensure that F_e + F_i > f_e + f_i at the initial stage of carrying out precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, where Fe is usually greater than F_i. This is because in the initial stage of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, the poor residents are only trying to understand the issue and waiting for the national precise poverty alleviation policy, meaning the endogenous motivation is relatively insufficient, which needs a strong external motivation to promote the practice of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism. This is simiar to pushing a cube on a slope in that it takes a lot of external force to bring the cube from a standstill to motion.

Theoretically, under the joint action of external and internal forces, poor residents can successfully achieve poverty alleviation. However, in the practice of China’s precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, with promotion of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, a strange phenomenon has emerged in a considerable part of the region; that is, the so-called “waiting, relying, and requiring“ lazy phenomenon. The city of Hanzhong in the Qinba Mountains of southern Shaanxi Province has long been a region where rural poverty is concentrated, and of the 11 counties (districts) under its jurisdiction, 10 are national key counties for poverty alleviation and development and national contiguous areas of dire poverty. In recent years, by virtue of its reputation as “China’s most beautiful rapeseed sea”, Hanzhong City has vigorously carried out rapeseed sea cultural tourism activities, which have become a livelihood industry and an important factor in driving the local poor people out of poverty. However, in the process of tourism poverty alleviation in Hanzhong City, some poor people lack the consciousness of poverty alleviation, and the ideas of “waiting, relying, and requiring” and “not worry about poverty, but rather about the uneven distribution of wealth” is widespread. They prefer keeping their land in poverty and waiting for low-income assistance rather than actively participating in the tourism industrialization and development advocated by the government, and even resent the tourists who flock to the rapeseed sea to take photos during the tourism festival [68].

The above phenomenon has a certain universality in the practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in China, which is superficially due to the backward ideology of poor residents, but in fact is related to the dominant position of the government in tourism poverty alleviation. As a result, poor residents in areas undergoing tourism poverty alleviation develop “waiting, relying, and requiring” lazy thinking and gradually enjoy the tourism poverty alleviation policy as a means of livelihood. Some poor households even take the poverty alleviation policy as a kind of welfare or charity, and are unwilling to move out of poverty or even find ways not to abolish of poverty.

This phenomenon is explained in Figure 2. As the cube moves, the slope becomes steeper, and a greater pulling force F must be applied if the cube is to keep moving toward the target. Under the government-led model, the motivation of poor residents is inhibited, resulting in some poor residents preferring to receive unpaid help from the government rather than self-reliant labor. Compared with the initial stage of poverty alleviation, F_i gradually becomes smaller (reflected in Figure 2, F_i′ < F_i), and f_i becomes correspondingly larger (reflected in Figure 2, f_i′ > f_i). In the case where the total pull force F becomes larger, F_e must also become larger (reflected in Figure 2, F_e′ > F_e) and f_e (reflected in Figure 2, f_e′ > f_e) may also become larger.

In summary, in the government-led model, due to the strong involvement of the local government in the initial stage and the whole process of leading, a large number of poverty alleviation resources are poured into poor areas so that the promotion of tourism-precise poverty alleviation is relatively easy (corresponding to Figure 2, the initial slope is relatively slow). However, with the depth of precise poverty alleviation, poor residents will be inhibited by their lack of motivation to abolish poverty and will produce “waiting, relying, and requiring” lazy thinking. At this time, it is difficult to fundamentally solve the problem of poverty by exogenous motivation alone, resulting in the subsequent tourism poverty alleviation becoming more and more difficult (corresponding to Figure 2, the latter slope is increasingly steep).

3.3. The Model of Motivation Mechanism of Precise Poverty Alleviation in Rural Tourism under the Community-Led Model

In the practice of rural tourism development in China, there are some poor villages with outstanding tourism resource endowments or excellent tourism development conditions. They rely on traditional villagers’ self-governance systems to take the initiative and the control of tourism development. In that process, they cannot avoid wrestling with local government, foreign enterprises, and other stakeholders in tourism development over rural tourism sites, but because these villages have gradually established a supra-family, regional socioeconomic organization which is compatible with tourism development through daily tourism cooperation and interaction, they have realized the unionization of community participation. The effective unionization of community residents not only helps to enhance the community’s profitability but also helps to increase the community’s voice, choice, and control in the game of confrontation with external stakeholders [69], enabling the community to decide the direction of local tourism development. In the background of the national strategy for precise poverty alleviation, these villages can fully rely on their own strength to drive the local and surrounding villagers who have not yet escaped from poverty to achieve poverty alleviation.

According to Figure 3, under the community-led model the force situation of the square in the initial stage of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism is similar to Figure 2, due to the strong negotiation and check-and-balance ability in the game with the local government and foreign enterprises. The community tourism management organization is able to ensure that most of the tourism development opportunities and benefits may stay within the community, thus realizing the tourism empowerment of poor residents to a large extent. For example, in Yubeng Village, Deqin County, Yunnan Province, villagers have truly participated in all aspects of local tourism decision-making, management, and benefit distribution, basically achieving economic empowerment, psychological empowerment, and partial political empowerment, and have developed into a community-owned, self-fulfilling sustainable tourism community [70]. In addition, the strict village rules and regulations largely inhibit the growth of lazy “waiting, relying, and begging” thinking, so the self-development ability of poor residents will gradually be improved, and the endogenous motivation will be continuously stimulated. With the development of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, many poor residents gradually grasp the skills to move out of poverty, such as operating farm caravans, selling local specialties, etc. Their reliance on external poverty alleviation resources is becoming less and less, the resistance to moving out of poverty is becoming less and less, and the process of moving out of poverty is becoming faster and faster. Additionally, once out of poverty, they are less likely to return to poverty because they have mastered the skills to move out of poverty through tourism.

This phenomenon can be explained in Figure 3. As the square moves, the slope becomes less and less steep, and at the same time, the F_i gradually increases (reflected in Figure 3, F_i′ > F_i), f_i becomes smaller (reflected in Figure 3, f_i′ < f_i), f_e also gradually becomes smaller (reflected in Figure 3, f_e′ < f_e), the tension force F_e applied to the square can gradually decrease (reflected in Figure 2, F_e′ < F_e), and the square can keep moving continuously toward the target. Given time, when the endogenous motivation and self-development ability of poor residents are sufficient to ensure their sustainable income, they can still rely on their own ability to move out of poverty and become rich, even if external resources for poverty alleviation are no longer invested. From the strategic planning of China’s precise poverty alleviation, the state’s poverty alleviation resources will be gradually reduced after China achieves full poverty eradication in 2020. Therefore, this model has some realistic significance.

Langde Miao Village in Leishan County, Guizhou Province, is known as the “Langde Mode” for its community-led, universal participation, work-sharing system, and distribution system. As one of the first eight villages in Guizhou province to carry out pilot tourism poverty alleviation in minority villages since the start of tourism development in 1987, Langde Miao Village has continued the core principle that “everyone has contributed to the construction and protection of the village, and every family should benefit” to this day. Villagers have always been the leading force in community tourism development, the main body of tourism development management and decision-making, tourism operation and reception, as well as community cultural resources and environmental protection. In local tourism development, the local government has repeatedly tried to introduce foreign capital to involve in the tourism development of Langde Miao Village, but all of them were unanimously opposed by the villagers. In a game with strong foreign subjects, the villagers not only rely on collective power to enhance their voice but even learn to use legal weapons to defend their legitimate rights and interests. Faced with the high transaction costs involved in negotiating with communities and bearing the consequences of legal sanctions for the destruction of national cultural heritage, external stakeholders have chosen to compromise and have so far failed to intervene forcibly [69]. This “community-led” tourism development mode of Lande Miao Village is very helpful to the local community’s residents to improve their self-development ability and stimulate their endogenous motivation. In terms of precise poverty alleviation, the motivation mechanism of tourism-precise poverty alleviation formed based on this mode is very durable.

In summary, under the community-led model, by relying on an effective self-governance system and the community’s spontaneous formation of tourism management organizations, poor villages can achieve community empowerment of poor residents in tourism, but because it takes some time to change the ideology of poor residents, improve their self-development ability, and cultivate their endogenous motivation. The practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation may face many difficulties and challenges in the initial stage, and its advancement is relatively difficult (corresponding to Figure 3, where the initial slope is relatively steep). However, as precise poverty alleviation proceeds, the poor residents’ self-development ability is increasingly improved, their endogenous motivation is increasingly enhanced, they gradually become the dominant force in local community tourism, and the difficulty of precise tourism poverty alleviation is relatively reduced (corresponding to Figure 3, where the later slope is increasingly flat).

4. The Improvement of the Model of Motivation Mechanism of Precise Poverty Alleviation in Rural Tourism

Obviously, in the government-led mode, the process of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism is initially easy and then difficult, and its motivation mechanism is characterized by abundant exogenous power and insufficient endogenous power, which will easily lead to the unsustainability of tourism poverty alleviation. In the community-led model, the process of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism is initially difficult and then easy, and its motivation mechanism is characterized by insufficient exogenous power and abundant endogenous power, but its tourism poverty alleviation process will be relatively long. Within the strategic planning period of China’s precise poverty alleviation, it is obvious that there is not enough time to achieve poverty alleviation simply by relying on the self-development of villages and considering the continuity between China’s precise poverty alleviation strategy and rural revitalization strategy, it is obvious that the current precise poverty alleviation strategy under the “government-led” mode is not sustainable in the long run. Thus, if the above two models are combined and different models are implemented at different stages, is it possible to optimize the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism?

In fact, according to the theory of tourism empowerment, the power of community residents is not automatically formed or simply granted by the local government but is achieved by the various interested parties in a continuous and iterative game process [71]. The reconstruction of the community power order and the enhancement of the autonomous status of community residents require the intervention and promotion of administrative and social forces (so called other empowerment), while it is more necessary for community residents to fully exert their subjective initiative and creativity, continuously transform their own strengths and release their own potential, and move from other assistance to self-help to achieve real empowerment (so called self-empowerment) [72]. If the government-led practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation has achieved a certain degree of economic empowerment from tourism, the community-led practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation has basically achieved a full range of tourism empowerment, including tourism economic empowerment, tourism social empowerment, tourism psychological empowerment, and tourism political empowerment. If the former is primarily an other-created right, the latter has both other-created and self-created rights. If the stakeholders can give the poor residents a full range of tourism empowerment while investing a large amount of poverty alleviation resources into the poor villages at the primary stage of tourism-precise poverty alleviation, and draw on the community-led model to strengthen the construction of the self-governance system and tourism management organizations in the poor villages, in order to guarantee the organization and management of tourism poverty alleviation by the communities themselves. This will not only ensure adequate other empowerment for the poor residents at the beginning stage of poverty alleviation, so that the tourism poverty alleviation practice can be carried out rapidly, but will also realize the self-empowerment of the poor residents within a limited period of time to ensure the sustainability of tourism poverty alleviation practice. The following subsections take Liangjiahe village in Yanchuan County, Shaanxi Province, a typical rural tourism poverty alleviation case in China, as an example, and try to construct an improved model of motivation mechanism for precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism. This paper uses this model to analyze the generating and evolution process of the motivation mechanism of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in Liangjiahe village.

4.1. Typicality of the Case

Liangjiahe village is located in Yanchuan County, Shaanxi Province, which is a pilot village of new rural construction in Yan’an City, a key village of rural tourism poverty alleviation in Shaanxi Province. It is a typical example of rural tourism poverty alleviation in China and a comprehensive demonstration (pilot) area of rural revitalization in China. In recent years, relying on the advantages of red resources, Liangjiahe has developed a series of tourism projects, such as the Village History Museum and the young intellectuals’ Culture Experience Park, and the tourism industry has rapidly developed as a result. In 2017, Liangjiahe village received more than 1 million visitors, and the comprehensive income from tourism reached more than 28 million yuan. Tourism has become the leading industry in Liangjiahe village to implement the precise poverty alleviation project. The typicality of Liangjiahe village is that tourism was strongly supported by local governments at all levels at the initial stage of local tourism-precise poverty alleviation. Additionally, both the community and residents gained tourism empowerment (especially tourism political empowerment) over a short period of time. On this basis, Liangjiahe village relied on village-run tourism enterprises and quickly realized the transformation from “exogenous power to help alleviate poverty” to “endogenous power to promote wealth”.

4.2. Data Acquisition and Research Methods

Since 2017, we have visited Liangjiahe village five times, in May 2017, March 2018, May 2018, February 2019, and July 2021, and, mainly using questionnaire research and in-depth interviews, we have obtained a large amount of first-hand information by researching some villagers, village cadres, tourism company employees and managers, and tourists in Liangjiahe village. The analysis below is mainly based on the interview data from the above five studies, which have been compiled to be around 33,000 words related to the research topic of this paper. The researcher used a variety of data collection methods in a natural scenario to explore the social phenomenon of precise poverty alleviation through tourism in case sites in a holistic manner, using an inductive approach to analyze data and form theories, and gain an interpretive understanding of their behavior and meaning construction through interaction with the research subjects [73].

4.3. Generating and Evolution of the Motivation Mechanism of Tourism-Precise Poverty Alleviation in Liangjiahe Village

4.3.1. Generating the Motivation Mechanism of Tourism-Precise Poverty Alleviation in Liangjiahe Village

According to the data, although rural tourism in Liangjiahe village started as early as 2012, the real emphasis on the development of rural tourism in the area began in 2015, with the official launch of China’s precise poverty alleviation strategy. In particular, in February 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping went to Shaanxi to investigate the situation of poverty alleviation in the old revolutionary areas and came to Liangjiahe village, where he had spent seven years as a team member, as his first stop. Subsequently, more and more tourists came to Liangjiahe village. In addition, in October 2015, the Yan Yan (Yan’an–Yanchuan) Expressway was opened, and the exit from “Wen’an Yi” went straight to Liangjiahe village, which has greatly improved the accessibility of Liangjiahe village and provided good traffic conditions for the rapid development of Liangjiahe village tourism. The village committee of Liangjiahe village keenly captured the information that tourism would play an important role in poverty alleviation and enrichment and provided Liangjiahe Rural Cultural Tourism Development Co with the help of the government and society at all levels.

It is noteworthy that Liangjiahe village received the attention of local governments at all levels and all sectors of society in the initial stage of tourism-precise poverty alleviation. The preferential policies from local governments at all levels in terms of land, loans, and entrepreneurship, as well as support from the community in terms of capital, talent, and intelligence, and the growing tourism market, have together formed a huge exogenous impetus that has strongly contributed to the development of Liangjiahe rural tourism. Although the internal momentum of tourism development in Liangjiahe village sprouted during this period, it is mainly concentrated in a few communities of “elites” or “capable people” in the village, and most villagers are still in the wait-and-see stage. Therefore, this stage is the initial stage of tourism-precise poverty alleviation. Although, the external power is strong and the internal power is emerging. Liangjiahe village’s tourism industry emerged quickly the beginning under the strong impetus of external power.

For most poor villages with tourism development conditions and foundations, it is not easy to rely on the endogenous power of the poor residents themselves alone when implementing tourism-precise poverty alleviation strategies. The practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in Liangjiahe village fully illustrates how important tourism empowerment from the outside is for the initiation and sustainable development of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in poor villages.

4.3.2. Evolution of the Motivation Mechanism of Tourism-Precise Poverty Alleviation in Liangjiahe Village

With the rapid development of Liangjiahe rural tourism, more and more villagers have experienced the benefits brought by tourism and have participated in various forms of local tourism activities. At present, more than 100 villagers are working in the Liangjiahe Rural Culture Tourism Development Co. On the one hand, this is due to the all-round tourism empowerment of Liangjiahe village from local governments at all levels, which not only provides many policy dividends for the implementation of a tourism-precise poverty alleviation strategy in the short term, leading to Liangjiahe village tourism’s rapid development, greatly stimulating villagers’ enthusiasm and motivation to participate in tourism poverty alleviation, but also improves the prestige and governance ability of the Liangjiahe village committee to a certain extent. This provides Liangjiahe village with a relatively strong gaming capital and negotiation ability when facing blackmail and coercion from foreign capital, and avoids the risk of a “tourism enclave” and leakage caused by the forced injection of foreign capital in some tourist areas. On the other hand, it also benefits from the tourism empowerment of the villagers by the Liangjiahe village committee. In the process of implementing rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation, Liangjiahe village has directly or indirectly guaranteed the legitimate rights and interests of villagers to participate in tourism development in the land system, tourism management system, and villagers’ self-governance system, and benefit distribution system, and basically realized the economic empowerment and part-political empowerment of tourism development, which has greatly stimulated villagers’ enthusiasm to participate in tourism. Villagers’ self-development ability has been enhanced and the endogenous power has been strengthened in the process of participating in tourism.

Specifically, in terms of the land system, the land used for tourism development in Liangjiahe village is leased, and the villagers whose land is occupied by tourism development can receive continuous and permanent land rent, which ensures the continuous benefit of the villager. In terms of the tourism management system, the Liangjiahe Rural Culture Tourism Development Co fully guarantees the right of villagers to participate in tourism development and provides many different types of positions for villagers. The employees from the grassroots to the management are basically local villagers, which to a large extent realizes the all-round, full, and comprehensive participation of villagers in tourism development. In terms of the villagers’ autonomy system, the Liangjiahe village Committee has given villagers a certain degree of decision-making power in tourism-precise poverty alleviation, which enables villagers to participate in some major decisions regarding tourism development and poverty alleviation, thus protecting villagers’ own interests to a greater extent and also helping to reduce conflicts of interest and contradictions in tourism poverty alleviation. In terms of the benefit distribution system, most of the tourism income of Liangjiahe villagers comes from tourism participation income, in addition to asset-based lease income and the annual dividend income from the Liangjiahe Rural Cultural Tourism Development Co. On the whole, villagers’ income is characterized by diversified sources and sustainable distribution, while relatively stable and sustainable income strengthens villagers’ enthusiasm to participate in tourism.

4.4. The Improvement of the Motivation Mechanism Model of Precise Poverty Alleviation in Rural Tourism

Obviously, Liangjiahe’s tourism-precise poverty alleviation practice is neither government-led nor community-led from the beginning to the end, but is mainly government-led in the primary stage of tourism-precise poverty alleviation and gradually changes to community-led as tourism poverty alleviation proceeds, which in essence realizes the transformation of tourism empowerment from other-empowerment-oriented to self-empowerment-oriented, which is the fundamental reason why Liangjiahe village could quickly realize tourism poverty alleviation and developed continuously on this basis. Thus, according to the generating and evolution process of the motivation mechanism of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in Liangjiahe village, we tried to construct an improved model of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, namely the motivation mechanism model of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism under the tourism empowerment mode (as is shown in Figure 4).

Combined with Figure 4, the relatively effective model of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism is government-led in the initial stages. The government should guide the poor residents from passive participation in poverty alleviation to active participation in poverty alleviation, from “want me to move out of poverty” to “I want to move out of poverty”. In this improved model, the inflection point T of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism occurs at the transition stage, when the government changes from leading to guiding and poor residents change from passive participation in poverty alleviation to active participation in poverty alleviation. At this stage, the government should be willing to decentralize, and the poor residents should be able to gradually rely on themselves to achieve poverty alleviation. This stage is relatively difficult for both sides, but once the breakthrough is made, it will be relatively easy to achieve the sustainability of tourism as a path out of poverty and, on this basis, to gradually achieve the revitalization of villages.

The experience of Liangjiahe village in tourism-precise poverty alleviation is not an isolated case. In order to abolish of poverty and become rich, the local government made great efforts to attract investment and drive local residents out of poverty by developing a hot spring resort project in Likeng Village, a typical mountainous village in northern Guangdong Province. At the beginning of tourism development, there were various contradictions between the government, enterprises, and villagers, and many conflicts of interest occurred, but these contradictions and conflicts were alleviated through the coordination mechanism with the characteristics of mutual checks and balances of power, and they gradually formed a new model of “tripartite joint governance” tourism poverty alleviation. Firstly, the villagers restrain the proxy behavior of the village committee through the “villagers’ direct election”, then the village committee restrains the developer’s business behavior by virtue of the legal power of the “villagers’ organization law”, while the developer regulates the relationship with the community through the economic and administrative influence on the employed villagers and their relatives, and the three check each other and promote each other, finally forming a joint governance mechanism. As the coordination mechanism between village committees and developers gradually matures, the governments of Xinfeng County and Meikeng Town gradually withdraw from decision-making on specific matters after completing the task of “matchmaking” and effectively assume new responsibilities for public administrative services. When the local government reduces its direct intervention, a joint governance mechanism can be established between rural communities and tourism developers through community empowerment measures based on the reform of the villagers’ direct election system, in which both sides share the benefits of tourism development [24], thus laying a solid institutional guarantee for local tourism poverty alleviation and rural revitalization. Although Liangjiahe village is in some ways unique, the generating and evolution process of the motivation mechanism of tourism-precise poverty alleviation has universal reference value.

5. Discussion

This paper borrows the force analysis method of the slope model in physics, constructs a general theoretical model of the power mechanism of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation, and compares and analyzes the characteristics of the motivation mechanism model of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation under the two different models: government-led and community-led practice. On this basis, through the case analysis of the generating and evolution process of the power mechanism of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in Liangjiahe village, Yanchuan County, Shaanxi Province, a typical case site of China’s rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation, the power mechanism model of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation under the tourism empowerment model is proposed. Specific discussions are as follows.

In order to more intuitively explain the dynamic mechanism of China’s rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation, our study adopts an analogical approach, comparing the process of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation to the process of poor residents pulling a cart and climbing a slope, simplifying the roles of various stakeholders in tourism-precise poverty alleviation practices to the forces of a rhomboid block in physics, simplifying the interaction mechanism of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation dynamics to the movement mechanism, and then constructing a general theoretical model of the power mechanism of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation. Firstly, the model fully considers the factors that affect precise poverty alleviation in rural areas, including both objective factors such as the level of economic and social development, infrastructure, poverty level, and difficulty of poverty alleviation in poor villages, and subjective factors such as the roles of various stakeholders in precise poverty alleviation in tourism. These factors have been addressed in previous studies [57,74,75]. Secondly, the model confirms that rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation is a huge systemic project, which requires the cooperation and interaction of relevant stakeholders, such as government, poor residents, tourism enterprises, tourists, and NGOs, to jointly promote the practice of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation. Previous studies mainly described the systemic characteristics of tourism-precise poverty alleviation qualitatively [11,12], but this model uses analogies and diagrams to reveal the systemic characteristics of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation in a more intuitive and visual way. Thirdly, the model provides a theoretical explanation for the transformation of China’s poverty alleviation strategy from “rough poverty alleviation” to “precise poverty alleviation”, which makes up for the deficiency of previous studies that usually treat the transformation of China’s poverty alleviation strategy as a policy context [76,77] without analyzing the causes. The traditional “rough poverty alleviation” strategy is ineffective because the exogenous motivation imposed on the poor is much smaller than the resistance of the poor to escape from poverty, and only through a “targeted” focus, which involves concentrating limited poverty alleviation resources on the real poor, can rural tourism poverty alleviation be realized.

Based on the practical characteristics of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation in China, our study further constructs a model of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation motivation mechanisms under the two different models: government-led and community-led, based on the general theoretical model of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation. These two models differ in terms of the tourism development’s foundation, tourism development stage, community activism, and tourism poverty alleviation sustainability, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. The former is mostly applicable to poor villages with a poor tourism development foundation, tourism development in the primary stage, and weak community dynamics, and its power is mainly exogenous and mainly from external stakeholders such as local governments. It has institutional advantages and can achieve the goal of poverty alleviation in the short term, but due to the insufficient cultivation of poor residents’ self-development ability in the process of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation, the self-development ability of poor residents is not cultivated enough, and the endogenous motivation is not stimulated enough, resulting in many residents being in a state of “passive poverty alleviation”, which is not conducive to ensuring the sustainability of tourism poverty alleviation and the effective connection between precise poverty alleviation and rural revitalization. Since the Chinese tourism industry has long implemented a “government-led” development model, the “government-led” model of tourism-precise poverty alleviation is very common in poor Chinese villages [78,79]. The latter is mostly applied to poor villages with a good tourism development foundation, tourism development in the development or maturity stage, and strong community dynamics, whose motivation is mainly endogenous and mainly from the poor residents themselves and community organizations. Although it is conducive to the subjectivity of poor residents in tourism-precise poverty alleviation, the progress of tourism-precise poverty alleviation practice is relatively slow [58]. Although this model is not mainstream in the current Chinese context, it is highly valuable for consolidating the results of tourism-precise poverty alleviation and achieving sustainability with regard to tourism-precise poverty alleviation. Both of these models have been confirmed in previous studies [80,81].

Based on the comparative analysis of the characteristics of the motivation mechanism model of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation under two different models: government-led and community-led, and combined with the practice of tourism-precise poverty alleviation in typical case sites, our research attempts to propose an improved model of the motivation mechanism of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation under the tourism empowerment model. It found that the relatively effective model of the rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation motivation mechanism was to implement government-led assistance in the initial stage of rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation, and make the rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation practice launch as soon as possible with a strong external force boosted on the government and other interest-related subjects. Then, on the basis of the poor residents’ full understanding of the national poverty alleviation policy, gradually implement tourism empowerment and enhance the poor residents’ precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism. In the end, it mainly relies on the endogenous motivation and self-development ability of poor residents to realize the sustainability of poverty alleviation in poor areas, and then realize the effective connection between tourism-precise poverty alleviation and rural revitalization. This model is effective because it has the advantages of both the government-led and community-led models, and avoids the disadvantages of both models. Moreover, in China, where the task of poverty eradication has been accomplished, the rapid development of the poverty-eradicated areas during the 13th Five-Year Plan period has provided a certain foundation for tourism development, and appropriately empowering the poverty-eradicated residents with tourism at this time will help consolidate and expand the results of tourism poverty eradication and realize the effective linkage between tourism poverty eradication and rural revitalization [27,82].

Unlike previous studies on tourism poverty alleviation based on the perspective of empowerment [27,82,83], the improved model proposed in this study effectively combines the advantages of the “government-led” model and the “community-led” model, and gradually shifts tourism poverty alleviation from “government-led” to “community-led” through the implementation of tourism empowerment.

Theoretically, we constructed a general theoretical model of a rural precise poverty alleviation power mechanism and a model of a rural tourism-precise poverty alleviation motivation mechanism under the two different models: government-led and community-led. These models not only intuitively explained the process of tourism-precise poverty alleviation motivation mechanism action but also provided theoretical notes for the adjustment of China’s tourism poverty alleviation strategy. In addition, this paper innovatively proposes an improved model of the poverty alleviation dynamics of rural tourism under the tourism empowerment model, which fits well with the current practice of tourism poverty alleviation in China and also has some theoretical reference value for the practice of tourism poverty alleviation in developing countries in the world.

Undeniably, there are many limitations to this study. Firstly, there are many factors that affect tourism-precise poverty alleviation. This paper mainly considered poverty alleviation stakeholders and the factors of concern were mainly subjective factors. In fact, objective factors such as the level of socio-economic development, geographical location, tourism resource endowment, poverty status, and infrastructure level in poor areas have a great impact on tourism poverty alleviation. Secondly, due to the characteristics of the model, it only qualitatively and roughly analyzes the general role of each tourism poverty alleviation stakeholder in rural poverty alleviation, and simply makes a comparison of the size of each tourism poverty alleviation stakeholder in terms of the status, importance, and size of the role of each tourism poverty alleviation stakeholder in rural precise poverty alleviation, and it thus lacks the necessary quantitative analysis. Thirdly, there is a lack of a sufficient explanation for the conditions of the application and implementation results of the tourism-precise poverty alleviation mechanism model under various models.

6. Conclusions and Policy Implications

Through the theoretical exploration of the dynamics of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism in China, this paper mainly draws the following conclusions. First, the operational mechanisms of the power of precise poverty alleviation in tourism under the government-led model and the community-led model are different, with the former dominating the practice of precise poverty alleviation in tourism in China in the past. Second, presently in China, the motivation mechanism of tourism-precise poverty alleviation under the empowerment model is more conducive to the sustainability of tourism-precise poverty alleviation.

Anti-poverty campaigns are long-term and persistent, and the elimination of absolute poverty under current standards in China after 2020 is not the same as the end of poverty alleviation work. In the post-poverty alleviation era, the focus of China’s anti-poverty efforts has shifted from poverty eradication to linking relative poverty alleviation with rural revitalization. Currently, many villages in China that rely on tourism development to alleviate poverty are still in the “government-led” stage. In order to fundamentally ensure the sustainability of tourism poverty alleviation and realize an effective linkage with rural revitalization and continuously enhance the endogenous motivation and self-development ability of relatively poor residents through appropriate tourism empowerment, it is necessary to gradually shift from “government-led” to “community-led”. In order to fundamentally ensure the sustainability of poverty alleviation and realize the effective linkage with rural revitalization, the endogenous motivation and self-development capacity of relatively poor residents should be strengthened through appropriate tourism empowerment and gradually shift from “government-led” to “community-led”.