Exploring the influence mechanism of tourism-related livelihood strategies on sustainable livelihoods from a common prosperity perspective, China

This study examined whether and how tourism-related livelihood strategies impact rural households’ livelihood sustainability in a common prosperity perspective, especially for low-income households. Both empirical model and in-depth interviews were involved. The empirical analysis results show that two types of tourism-related livelihood strategies, i.e., tourism-led and semi-tourism strategies significantly improve the sustainability of households’ livelihood. Furthermore, tourism-led households are predominantly driven by economic rationality, obtaining high income from tourism to enhance livelihood; while semi-tourism households are predominantly driven by social rationality, taking tourism as one of options to broaden livelihood pathways to stabilize livelihood. For low-income households, the impact of semi-tourism livelihood strategy is more significant for livelihood sustainability than tourism-led strategy, either by quantitative or qualitative analysis. Besides, targeted policy assistance related to tourism exert a significantly positive impact on this group. The findings enrich the theoretical significance of the SLF framework and provide practical evidence for paying attention to low-income households in tourism development of rural China.