The Influence of High-Quality Rural Sanitation on Improving the Competitiveness of Traditional Village Ecotourism—Taking Toilet Improvement in Yunnan Province, China as An Example

The “toilet improvement” initiative has been actively responded to and implemented across China to improve the local sanitation environment and service quality since 2015.. This paper takes Yunnan Province as an example to evaluate the impact of this measure on the competitiveness of ecotourism in rural traditional villages. The ArcGIS tool was used to compare and screen the geographic environmental characteristics of six batches of 778 villages in Yunnan Province that were evaluated as national-level traditional villages in the early stage, and 37 villages with the same elevation changes and slope were selected for a comparative analysis, to reduce the impact of differences in three-dimensional topography and geomorphology. Combined with the TOPSIS comprehensive evaluation method and OLS econometric regression model, this study examined the ecotourism competitiveness of the 37 selected traditional villages and the impact of the toilet improvement initiative on their competitiveness. The results show that the ecotourism competitiveness of traditional villages in Yunnan Province is generally low, and there are obvious hierarchical characteristics. The road choice, regional distribution quantity, distance and service accessibility of public toilet construction have a significant influence on the overall ecotourism competitiveness of the villages in Yunnan Province. Therefore, three suggestions are put forward: strengthen the ecotourism construction of traditional villages in Yunnan Province as a whole and in each local area, pay attention to and strengthen the quantity and quality of construction of the public toilets relevant to ecotourism in traditional villages, and pay attention to the accessibility and service scope of the public toilets in the construction process.