A View of Ethnic Communities' Tourism Participation from the Perspective of Environmental Justice

Against the backdrop of rapid tourism development, the imbalanced distribution of conflicting interests among community residents in tourist destinations has become a focus of attention. As core stakeholders of tourist destinations, community residents play an indispensable role in creating a “hospitable atmosphere”. Community residents' participation in tourism development is vital for promoting sustainable development. Environmental justice theory emphasizes the fairness of resource allocation and participation in negotiations, and it has developed into an essential issue for the sustainable development of tourist destinations. This study took Skula Town in Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture as a case study to explore the participation behavior of residents in ethnic tourism communities in the development of tourist destinations. Based on grounded theory and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), a complex causal model of high participation behavior of the residents in ethnic tourism communities was constructed to reveal the multiple influencing factors and their interrelationships from the environmental justice perspective. Nineteen complex combination paths were identified that can promote the high participation behavior of community residents, which verified the diversity and complexity of the conditions behind the high participation behavior of residents in ethnic tourism communities. The results show that fair resource allocation, effective environmental protection measures, and residents' recognition of tourism development are the key factors driving high participation behavior. This study reveals the complex relationships between multiple factors that influence participation behavior from the perspective of environmental justice, with the aim of deepening our understanding of residents in ethnic tourism communities' participation in tourism development and providing a reference for the sustainable development of local tourism and the stable development of society.