Evaluation of Community Tourism Empowerment of Ancient Town Based on Analytic Hierarchy Process: A Case Study of Zhujiajiao, Shanghai

Abstract

The research on community empowerment in the protection and utilization of ancient towns has practical significance for the sustainable development of ancient towns. Combined with empirical research, questionnaire survey, this paper analyzes the residents’ awareness of empowerment in the community participation of tourism, taking Zhujiajiao ancient town as a case study. Firstly, the evaluation system of community empowerment is established from four dimensions, including economy, society, politics, and psychology. Secondly, the weights of various factors are calculated by using the analytic hierarchy process, and the status quo of community tourism empowerment is comprehensively evaluated by the fuzzy analysis method. The results show that the degree of community empowerment in Zhujiajiao ancient town is between “average” and “good”. Psychological empowerment has the best score, while political empowerment is relatively weak. So, the dilemma of the top-down participation system needs to be changed. Self-government tourism organizations and the rules of income distribution should be established along with the ability training of tourism management to optimize the community participation mechanism. Application of the analytic hierarchy process to ancient town tourism empowerment is a new attempt and the evaluation scale can be used to other similar sites. Strategies in this paper have referential value for tourism sustainability in practice.

1. Introduction

Community participation represents a broad consensus in tourism development in protected areas [1], but the current research tends to explore at the conceptual level [2,3]. How to scientifically evaluate the benefits of community participation? What kind of participation mode is most conducive to mobilizing the enthusiasm of the community? How to improve the sustainability of heritage protection and tourism development through community participation? These are the problems that need to be solved. Historical towns are an essential part of the urban heritage protection system of China, and they are also a valuable resource for cultural tourism. In recent years, many ancient towns have experienced the process of coordinated development of protection and tourism. The ancient town is not only an essential carrier of regional cultural heritage but also a place for residents to live. Except for the newly constructed antique ancient towns, tourism in the ancient cities needs to be planned with community residents as the main body of participation and development. There is a natural advantage in the topic of community participation in tourism development of ancient towns. In order to achieve sustainable tourism in the ancient towns and combine with community participation and tourism development, it needs to guide community residents to actively participate in tourism projects and decision-making to promote community tourism empowerment. At present, there are some problems in community participation, such as an imperfect participation system, unclear responsibilities and rights, insufficient involvement, and so on [4]. Many studies show that a detailed evaluation of community tourism empowerment can reflect the effect and quality of community participation and its problems [5,6], which is a feasible research approach.

Since Murphy introduced community participation as a planning method to tourism management in 1985 [7], relevant scholars have conducted many studies on community tourism and obtained many research results. MacCannell believed that the development of tourism has destroyed the local traditional culture, and the community’s lifestyle characteristic culture is gradually commercialized [8]. Hermans proposed that community participation in tourism promotes local agriculture development, and the impact of tourism development on the community has been compared and discussed at the economic and psychological levels from both positive and negative perspectives [9]. Rappaport first noticed the difference in the ranks of community participation and believed that the content of community participation at different levels of individuals, organizations, and communities should be distinguished [10]. Inskeep proposed that the community should participate in the actual development and tourism management as much as possible and maximize the social and economic benefits of the community [11]. The higher the degree of community participation, the more sustainable the local tourism industry can be ensured to be [12]. However, due to the lack of effectiveness and practicability of community participation, Akama first proposed the necessity of empowering community residents in the study of ecological tourism in Kenya, introducing the theory of empowerment into tourism planning and opening up community participation [13]. Many studies have shown that without tourism empowerment, it is challenging to achieve tourism participation truly, and tourism sustainability is also difficult to achieve [14,15]. The degree of community residents’ involvement in tourism has actually increased [16]. In 1999, Scheyvens formally introduced the empowerment theory into ecotourism research. He clearly pointed out that the recipient of tourism empowerment should be the destination community and proposed a community tourism empowerment framework that includes political, economic, psychological, and social dimensions [17]. His theory promotes the hierarchical research of tourism empowerment, but it is still not easy to quantify and evaluate non-economic benefits [18]. Choi et al. used the Delphi method and factor analysis to explore the indicators of community residents’ participation in tourism development [19]. Based on the personal tourism income scale proposed by Perdue et al. in 1990 [20], Boley et al. proposed an evaluation system with four levels and 16 factors [21]. Boley and McGehee believed that psychological empowerment and personal economic interests have a positive impact on tourism development [22], which provides a basis for many subsequent empirical studies. Then, Boley et al. extended the Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale to Oizumi in Japan in 2015 and confirmed the effectiveness of applying the world’s scale from psychological, social, and political empowerment. This study provided managers with a useful tool for tracking the effectiveness of their marketing and management efforts aimed at increasing resident empowerment [23]. On this basis, the scale was also applied to Fredericksburg, Texas in the USA to explore empowerment in different regions and further demonstrate the relationship between empowerment as a mediator variable and knowledge and action other two factors: Residents’ perceived knowledge of tourism and political action regarding tourism [24]. Besides, the research of Shafieisabet proves that empowerment has a positive impact on the perception of social ecology, environmental ecology, and economy over the participation of local stakeholders [25].

In general, previous studies have presented some tourism empowerment scales. Still, the evaluation system is not yet perfect, and it also needs to be extended to other countries to verify and localize. The research presents a trend, from focusing on the internal relationship between community participation and empowerment to the impact of empowerment on other aspects of the destination. In terms of research methods, the previous research on tourism empowerment has gradually changed from qualitative description to quantitative classification. The most commonly used qualitative research methods are ethnography and anthropology by field survey and observation [26,27,28]. The advantage is that it can analyze the cause, effect, and performance of empowerment in detail from observation and interview. However, because of too much subjective description, qualitative evaluation sometimes affects its scientific value, objectivity, and accuracy. On the quantitative research of tourism empowerment, there are confirmatory factor analysis [4,23], the structural equation model [24,25,29], the analytic hierarchy process [30], and so on. The advantage is that it can quantify the social concept, which is not easy to measure, and intuitively express the degree of empowerment through numbers. Comparatively speaking, the analytic hierarchy process has more advantages because it is a multi-objective system evaluation method combining qualitative and quantitative analysis. This method is good at solving the evaluation and decision-making problems of multilevel and multi-objective systems. Previous studies have used it to evaluate rural tourism community participation [30], but this method is rarely applied to the evaluation of ancient town tourism empowerment. Therefore, this paper uses this system analysis method to analyze and evaluate the complex system of “community tourism empowerment” layer by layer, to get a more objective evaluation result of the status of community tourism empowerment in ancient towns, and to find out the deficiencies and strategies of community participation.

As a sustainable tourism planning method, community tourism can be established in modern society in which individuals have the opportunity and responsibility of citizenship [31]. Community participation in tourism development in developing countries may have operational, structural, and cultural limitations [32]. Combined with the local characteristics of “big government, small society” in China, this paper selects Zhujiajiao, an ancient town with the typical development mode of ancient towns in Shanghai, as the research object. The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively study the degree of empowerment of community tourism by constructing an evaluation system and to find out the problems and solutions of community participation in tourism in the localization process of developing countries. This paper’s innovation is to try and explore the evaluation method of community tourism empowerment in ancient towns. At the same time, the significance of the study is to provide theoretical support for the further harmonious development of community participation in ancient town tourism, to promote the sustainability of ancient town tourism, and the scale proposed in the study is expected to be applied to other countries and regions for verification and improvement.

2. Research Design

2.1. Overview of the Study Area

Zhujiajiao Town, located in the south-central part of Qingpu District in the west of Shanghai, is an important traffic channel from Shanghai to Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Zhujiajiao ancient town is a national AAAA level scenic spot and one of the four famous historical and cultural towns in Shanghai (Figure 1). Zhujiajiao ancient town has a long history. As early as 1700 years ago in the Three Kingdoms period, the market Zhujia village was formed and it has maintained a mixed mode of commercial and residential. Relying on profound cultural heritage and rich tourism resources, Zhujiajiao Town has driven the development of the tourism industry throughout the whole town. Only in 2018, the total number of tourists reached 7.14 million.

2.2. Questionnaire Survey

In order to study the related problems of community tourism empowerment in Zhujiajiao ancient town, the method of questionnaire survey and interview was adopted. The questionnaire design refers to the previous research results, involving two parts: the first part is to investigate the necessary information of the residents of Zhujiajiao and the status quo of tourism empowerment, including gender, age, education background, local living time, frequency of going to the scenic spot, the number of times of participating in the decision-making of the scenic spot, and the perception of the status quo of the scenic spot. The second part is the main part of the questionnaire, mainly from the economic, psychological, social, and political dimensions, including 17 survey indicators, as shown in

Table 1. Evaluation index and references of community empowerment system.

Selected Indicators	Literature Sources
(1) Tourism development has dramatically promoted the local economic development;	Chunyang et. al. (2013) [5], Shafieisabet et. al. (2020) [25]
(2) Tourism development has increased the income of local residents and improved their quality of life;	Xiaomin et. al. (2017) [4] Shafieisabet et. al. (2020) [25]
(3) Tourism development increases the employment opportunities of local residents;	Scheyvens (1999) [17], Chunyang et. al. (2013) [5]
(4) The distribution of tourism income among government, community residents, and scenic spots is fair and reasonable;	Ryan, C. (2002) [33], Xiaomin et. al. (2017) [4]
(5) Tourism development makes local residents feel proud of the community and increase their self-confidence;	Scheyvens (1999) [17], Xiaomin et. al. (2017) [4]
(6) The development of tourism improves the happiness index of local residents;	Ryan, C. (2002) [33]
(7) Local residents are eager to have more say in tourism development and participate in tourism decision-making;	Rappaport (1984) [11], Joo et. al. (2020) [24]
(8) Local residents voluntarily accept education and training on local tourism;	Scheyvens (1999) [17], Xiaomin et. al. (2017) [4]
(9) Tourism development enables local residents to understand the importance of the cultural characteristics of the ancient town and voluntarily participate in the protection of local culture;	Boley et. al. (2014) [21], Xiaomin et. al. (2017) [4]
(10) Tourism development increases opportunities for local residents to exchange and cooperate with their neighbors;	Boley and McGehee (2014) [22]
(11) Tourism development enhances the sense of responsibility of local residents and the cohesion of communities;	Boley et. al. (2014) [21], Xiaomin et. al. (2017) [4]
(12) With the development of tourism, the social status of local residents has improved;	Scheyvens (1999) [17]
(13) The development of tourism has greatly improved the local infrastructure (such as transportation, medical and fire-fighting facilities, etc.);	Scheyvens (1999) [17], Chunyang et. al. (2013) [5]
(14) Tourism development improves the quality of the ancient town and its surrounding environment;	Scheyvens (1999) [17]
(15) Local residents can timely understand the guidelines and policies of local tourism development planning;	Wallace et. al. (1996) [34], Joo et. al. (2020) [24]
(16) In the process of local tourism development, the government gives community residents the right to participate in tourism decision-making;	Akama (1996) [13], Xiaomin et. al. (2017) [4]
(17) There are special tourism organizations to represent the interests and needs of local residents.	Scheyvens (1999) [17], Shafieisabet et. al. (2020) [25]

.

Among them: (1) to (4) are indicators of economic empowerment, (5) to (9) are indicators of psychological empowerment, (10) to (14) are indicators of social empowerment, (15) to (17) are indicators for political empowerment. The questionnaire survey was carried out in Zhujiajiao in February 2019. In this survey, 200 questionnaires were sent out, and 183 effective questionnaires were recovered. The effective rate of the questionnaires was 91.5%. The questionnaire survey samples come from several areas near Zhujiajiao: Xihuxin Village neighborhood, Beidajie neighborhood, Dongjing Street neighborhood, Donghu Street neighborhood, and Zhangjiawei villager neighborhood. The samples were randomly distributed in each community with the assistance of the neighborhood committee. They reflect the structural characteristics of Zhujiajiao’s ancient town community, covering most classes and age groups of residents. SPSS software was used to analyze the data of the questionnaire. The reliability of the 17 factors selected at this stage was analyzed. The calculated reliability coefficient was 0.915, greater than 0.9. According to the judgment principle proposed in the literature [4], the data reliability quality of this study is very high, which can be used for further analysis. Analytic hierarchy process is used to evaluate the degree of community tourism empowerment in ancient towns, mainly to solve the evaluation index system, the weight of each index factor and consistency test, and then carry out fuzzy comprehensive evaluation.

2.3. Scaling Method

The scale of AHP is used to build the judgment matrix to establish the importance of subordinate factors in evaluation indexes. In this paper, the 1–9 scale method is selected, and nine numbers between 1 and 9 and their reciprocal are used as evaluation elements, as shown in

Table 2. Definition of digital scale.

Importance Level	Meaning	Explanation
1	Equally important	The two factors are of the same importance.
3	Slightly important	One factor is slightly more important than the other.
5	Very important	One factor is more important than the other.
7	Obviously important	One factor is obviously more important than the other.
9	Extremely important	One factor is extremely more important than the other.
2, 4, 6, 8	——	Intermediate value of the above adjacent judgments.

. The qualitative concept is transformed into quantitative value, and the relative importance of each function is scaled to form a judgment matrix [30]. The specific operation steps are as follows: (1) Build a comparison judgment matrix between the two factors and compare the importance of the two factors. (2) Calculate the relative importance of elements under a single criterion, and sort the factors in this hierarchy. (3) Check the consistency of the judgment matrix. If it fails to pass the inspection, it is necessary to discuss the modification matrix with experts repeatedly.

3. Data Statistics and Analysis

3.1. Population Characteristics of Community Residents

The basic information of the respondents in Zhujiajiao community includes several aspects: gender, age, education level, distance between residence and Scenic Spot (

Table 3. Population characteristics of Zhujiajiao ancient town community.

Demographic Variables	Classification Index	Frequency	Percentage (%)
Gender	Male	83	45.36
	Female	100	54.64
Age	16–29	66	36.07
	30–39	42	22.95
	40–49	22	12.02
	50–59	22	12.02
	60 or above	31	16.94
Education	Junior high school or below	47	25.68
	Senior high school	68	37.16
	Tertiary	28	15.3
	Undergraduate	40	21.86
	Master or above	0	0
Distance between Residence and Scenic Spot	Under 3 km	79	43.17
	3–5 km	33	18.03
	6–10 km	37	20.22
	11–15 km	16	8.74
	Above 15 km	18	9.84

), as well as time of living in the local area. In terms of gender, the proportion of women in Zhujiajiao ancient town (54.64%) is slightly higher than that of men (45.36%). The overall ratio of men to women is relatively balanced, and the sample distribution is relatively average. In terms of age options, among the five age groups designed according to the questionnaire, the proportion of Zhujiajiao ancient town in each age group is 36.07%, 22.95%, 12.02%, 12.02%, and 16.94%, respectively. According to the results of field interviews, many young people are going out and looking for development opportunities, rather than staying in the ancient town. In terms of the characteristics of education level, the cultural level of residents over 60 years old is generally below high school. The educational level of adults aged 40–60 years old is evenly distributed. And the cultural level of the middle-aged generation of young people aged 19–39 years old has significantly improved. With the development of the times, the cultural level and educational conditions of residents in Zhujiajiao area have been generally improved.

Besides, from the distance option between residence and scenic spot, it can be seen that 61.2% of the residents in the survey live within 5 km, and more than 80% live within 10 km. From this perspective, the relationship between the respondents and the scenic spot is relatively close. We can say that perception and attitude of these people in the survey are representative and effective. Finally, according to the data of living time in the local area, 43.17% of the local population lived there for more than 21 years, while 30.06% lived there for less than ten years. The development of tourism has brought a floating population and community vitality to Zhujiajiao.

3.2. Data Statistics of Empowerment Indexes

According to the recognition degree of community residents on various indicators in the questionnaire survey, it is divided into five grades from “completely agree” to “completely disagree” by the scoring principle of the five-grade system. “Completely agree” is scored with 5 points, and “completely disagree” is scored with 1 point. The average value and standard deviation of the results of 17 indexes obtained by statistics are shown in

Table 4. Statistical results of questionnaire data.

Empowerment Index	Completely Agree	Agree	Not Sure	Disagree	Completely Disagree	Mean Value	Standard Deviation
(1)	60	78	36	6	3	4.0164	0.90
(2)	45	57	53	18	10	3.5956	1.12
(3)	48	65	52	10	8	3.7377	1.04
(4)	22	50	57	17	37	3.0164	1.29
(5)	47	73	48	10	5	3.8033	0.97
(6)	36	55	70	16	6	3.5410	1.01
(7)	56	72	42	4	9	3.8852	1.03
(8)	32	81	57	8	5	3.6940	0.90
(9)	63	87	27	2	4	4.1093	0.85
(10)	20	68	73	16	6	3.4372	0.91
(11)	27	67	74	12	3	3.5628	0.88
(12)	33	59	67	17	7	3.5137	1.01
(13)	55	70	47	6	5	3.8962	0.96
(14)	54	62	52	9	6	3.8142	1.02
(15)	29	65	51	17	21	3.3497	1.19
(16)	13	56	60	21	33	2.9727	1.19
(17)	25	58	53	17	30	3.1694	1.26

in order to analyze the current situation of tourism empowerment in Zhujiajiao area.

3.3. Analysis of Community Residents’ Perception of Tourism

In order to evaluate the tourism empowerment of the Zhujiajiao community, it is necessary to first master the residents’ perception of the development of the scenic spot and their participation in tourism. According to the data in Figure 2, 40% of the residents go to the scenic spot for work or entertainment every day. Forty-eight percent of the residents choose to go to the ancient town for leisure and recreation at different frequencies in their spare time. Another 12% of the residents have no plans to visit the ancient town in the future because there are too many tourists during holidays. Most of the respondents are closely related to the scenic spot. They enjoy going to the scenic spot and have a sense of belonging to the ancient town. This shows that the development of ancient town tourism has a reasonable mass basis.

Based on the analysis of community residents’ perception of the development status of ancient town tourism, 78.69% of the residents of Zhujiajiao ancient town think that the scenic spot develops rapidly and attracts a large number of tourists, as shown in Figure 3. The development of scenic spots has made the place more famous, optimized the local industrial structure, improved the local economic situation, and promoted the region’s development. Another 21.31% of the residents believe that the tourism development of Zhujiajiao ancient town has been in a bottleneck, and it is challenging to sustain growth and it is necessary to find other breakthroughs. Generally speaking, the local residents think that the ancient town of Zhujiajiao has a certain degree of tourism attraction, but it is worth exploring further.

As shown in Figure 4, up to 70% of the residents expressed their willingness to participate in tourism development in Zhujiajiao ancient town. They are eager to get more rights to make decisions on tourism development and are willing to contribute to ancient towns’ construction. Only 7% of the respondents were reluctant to participate in community tourism, and 23% of the residents were not sure about it. From these data, it can be seen that residents of Zhujiajiao ancient town have a greater willingness to participate in local tourism development. Government and relevant departments should develop further strategies for the psychological and political empowerment for residents who have not expressed their support for community participation in tourism.

From the perspective of participation in tourism decision-making options, 68.85% of the residents said they had never participated in tourism decision-making and had not heard that residents could participate in tourism decision-making. Only 17% of the residents participated in 1–2 tourism decisions; 6% of the residents participated in 3–5 or more tourism decisions; only 2% of the residents participated in almost every tourism decision, with the data decreasing in sequence. Although the relevant person in charge said that the sampling method was adopted in seeking residents’ opinions, most resident interviewees in Zhujiajiao ancient town were not given corresponding rights in tourism development, and their power and ability in tourism participation were relatively low.

4. AHP Evaluation on the Tourism Empowerment of Community in Ancient Town

4.1. Determination of Evaluation System Factors

The indicators reflect the level of tourism empowerment of ancient town communities from different perspectives. Still, each indicator’s importance is different, so it is necessary to judge the weight of each indicator through scientific methods. The two factors are compared with each other, and the relative importance of indicators is quantified by the 1–9 scaling method, then the positive and negative judgment matrix is established. In order to reduce the difficulty of comparing different forms of factors, qualitative and quantitative methods are used. By calculating the maximum eigenvalue λmax and the corresponding eigenvector w, the matrix is normalized to form the weight vector of each factor. To avoid the data difference brought by subjective judgment, it is necessary to test the consistency of the matrix. Generally, when the consistency ratio CI is less than 0.1, the degree of matrix inconsistency is within the allowable range [30]. If the data do not pass the consistency check, it is necessary to check whether there is a logical problem.

The evaluation system of tourism empowerment of community can be divided into three levels: target level, primary index, and secondary index, as shown in

Table 5. Construction of the evaluation system for tourism empowerment of community.

Target Level Index	Primary Index	Secondary Index
Evaluation system of tourism empowerment (U)	Economic empowerment (U1)	Promote local economic development (u11)
		Increase residents’ income (u12)
		Increase employment opportunities (u13)
		Reasonably distributed tourism income (u14)
	Psychological empowerment (U2)	Increase pride (u21)
		Increase happiness index (u22)
		Increase awareness of rights (u23)
		Receive tourism training (u24)
		Consciously protect local culture (u25)
	Social empowerment (U3)	Increase communication between residents (u31)
		Improve community cohesion (u32)
		Improve social status (u33)
		Improve the infrastructure (u34)
		Improve environmental quality (u35)
	Political empowerment (U4)	Have the right to know about tourism (u41)
		Have the right to participate in tourism decision-making (u42)
		Establish Community Tourism Organization (u43)

. After repeated discussions with relevant experts in the field, the two factors’ importance was judged and compared, and a positive and negative judgment matrix was constructed. After the hierarchical single sorting and consistency test, the weight of each factor is obtained. By calculation, the consistency ratio of the evaluation system of the target level and the evaluation of economic empowerment, psychological empowerment, social empowerment, and political empowerment is 0.0379, 0.0576, 0.0392, 0.0389, and 0.0177, respectively, which are all less than 0.1, indicating that the results are consistent. The calculation results are shown in

Table 6. Results of indicators weight calculation of tourism empowerment of community.

Primary Index	Weight 1	Secondary Index	Weight 2	Total Sort Weight
U1	0.4694	u11	0.1493	0.0701
		u12	0.3805	0.1786
		u13	0.2695	0.1265
		u14	0.2007	0.0942
U2	0.1919	u21	0.1172	0.0225
		u22	0.2725	0.0523
		u23	0.2194	0.0421
		u24	0.1558	0.0299
		u25	0.2350	0.0451
U3	0.2199	U31	0.2024	0.0445
		U32	0.1487	0.0327
		U33	0.1337	0.0294
		U34	0.2942	0.0647
		U35	0.2210	0.0486
U4	0.1188	U41	0.3779	0.0449
		U42	0.3737	0.0444
		U43	0.2483	0.0295

.

4.2. Analysis of Evaluation System Factor Weight

According to the weight analysis of each factor in the evaluation system of community empowerment in the ancient town, the economic empowerment has the largest proportion in the community empowerment evaluation, which is 0.4694. This is related to the main contradictions in China at the present stage. As a developing country, China’s tourism development is in the initial phase of transformation. Economic drive has become the fundamental driving force of tourism development, and the factors related to residents’ direct interests are more important.

The weight value of political empowerment is 0.1188, accounting for the lowest proportion Among them, “Establishing Community Tourism Organization” only accounts for 0.0295 of the evaluation system. Community residents have been in a relatively weak position in the game with the government and developers. The lack of participation system and help of NGO and NPO organizations are difficult to change in a short period, which has an impact on the study of tourism empowerment at this stage.

Social empowerment and psychological empowerment are analyzed from the collective and individual perspectives, respectively. The “infrastructure improvement” and “happiness index improvement” related to residents’ interests account for a relatively high proportion. In contrast, the “social status improvement” related to democratic consciousness accounts for a relatively low proportion, which basically conforms to China’s national conditions.

4.3. Comprehensive Fuzzy Evaluation of Community Empowerment

• Determination of evaluation object factor set U, evaluation set V, and measurement scale H

The evaluation index set U = {Un} (n = 1, 2, 3, 4) of tourism empowerment of ancient town community is determined, in which four evaluation indexes represent economic empowerment, psychological empowerment, social empowerment, and political empowerment, respectively. Each index Un is composed of the next index Unj. The evaluation set V = {VN} (n = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) = {Totally agree, Partially agree, General, Partially disagree, Totally disagree} is defined. Five evaluation grades correspond to community tourism empowerment {Awful, Bad, Not bad, Good, Excellent}. Then the measurement scale H = {5, 4, 3, 2, 1} is established. The closer the score is to 5, the better the status of community tourism empowerment in ancient towns.

• Establishing fuzzy relation matrix

According to the field survey and questionnaire data in Table 6, the evaluation matrix Rn (n = 1, 2, 3, 4) is established to reflect the membership degree of index Unj to evaluation set V.

$$\begin{gathered} {\mathrm{R}}_1=\left[\begin{array}{ccccc}\begin{array}{c}0.3279\end{array}& 0.4262& 0.1967& 0.0328& 0.0164\\ 0.2459& 0.3115& 0.2896& 0.0984& 0.0546\\ 0.2623& 0.3552& 0.2842& 0.0546& 0.0437\\ 0.1202& 0.2732& 0.3115& 0.0929& 0.2022\end{array}\right] \\ {\mathrm{R}}_2=\left[\begin{array}{ccccc}0.2568& 0.3989& 0.2623& 0.0546& 0.0273\\ 0.1967& 0.3005& 0.3825& 0.0874& 0.0328\\ 0.3060& 0.3934& 0.2295& 0.0219& 0.0492\\ 0.1749& 0.4426& 0.3115& 0.0437& 0.0273\\ 0.3443& 0.4754& 0.1475& 0.0109& 0.0219\end{array}\right] \\ {\mathrm{R}}_3=\left[\begin{array}{ccccc}0.1093& 0.3716& 0.3989& 0.0874& 0.0328\\ 0.1475& 0.3661& 0.4044& 0.0656& 0.0164\\ 0.1803& 0.3224& 0.3661& 0.0929& 0.0383\\ 0.3005& 0.3825& 0.2568& 0.0328& 0.0273\\ 0.2951& 0.3388& 0.2842& 0.0492& 0.0328\end{array}\right] \\ {\mathrm{R}}_4=\left[\begin{array}{ccccc}\begin{array}{c}0.1585\end{array}& 0.3552& 0.2787& 0.0929& 0.1148\\ 0.0710& 0.3060& 0.3279& 0.1148& 0.1803\\ 0.1366& 0.3169& 0.2896& 0.0929& 0.1639\end{array}\right] \end{gathered}$$

(1)

Similarly, according to the “weight 1” column in Table 6, the weight of each index factor is obtained, and the weight vector W_B of the secondary evaluation factor is obtained as follows:

$${\mathrm{W}}_{\mathrm{B}}=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0.4694& 0.1919& 0.2199& 0.1188\end{array}\right)$$

(2)

Then the evaluation matrix is normalized, and the second level fuzzy comprehensive evaluation set A is obtained as follows:

$$\mathrm{A}={\mathrm{R}}_{\mathrm{U}}{\mathrm{W}}_{\mathrm{B}}=\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}0.2242& 0.3502& 0.2901& 0.0693& 0.0662\end{array}\right)$$

(3)

The second level of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation set A is calculated to remove the fuzzy value, and the comprehensive evaluation value E of tourism empowerment of ancient town community is obtained as follows:

$$\mathrm{E}=\mathrm{A}·\mathrm{H}=5\times 0.2242+4\times 0.3502+3\times 0.2901+2\times 0.0693+1\times 0.0662=3.5969$$

(4)

5. Results and Discussion

5.1. Result on the Degree of Empowerment of Community

5.1.1. Overall Evaluation of Empowerment of Community

According to the evaluation results, combined with the theory of empowerment and on-the-spot interviews, this paper analyzes community empowerment’s status in depth. The comprehensive evaluation score of community empowerment in Zhujiajiao ancient town is 3.5969, and the degree of empowerment is between “not bad” and “good”. It was found that residents have gained pride, more employment opportunities, and improved infrastructure in tourism development than Zhujiajiao ancient town before tourism development. Residents generally believe that they have achieved empowerment by the action of tourism to some extent.

Referring to the five-point system, the average score below 2.5 indicates objection, between 2.5 and 3.5 indicates neutrality, and above 3.5 indicates approval. The results show that the fuzzy evaluation value of economic empowerment is 3.5805; Psychological empowerment’s is 3.8040; Social empowerment’s is 3.6847. The average value of the three levels of empowerment is greater than 3.5, which shows that the empowerment is basically realized in community participation in tourism development. The fuzzy evaluation value of political empowerment is 3.1638, which belongs to the neutral range, which is between “not bad” and “good”, and tends to “not bad”, almost in the state of decentralization. The fuzzy value of psychological empowerment is the highest, which shows that residents are most in favor of community empowerment in the psychological dimension. Similarly, compared to Boley’s study, of the three sub-dimensions of empowerment, Oizumi residents perceived themselves to be more socially empowered (4.05) than psychologically empowered (3.91) or politically empowered (3.43) [23], which is consistent with the study result of Zhujiajiao old town in our study. In their research, although only social, psychological, and political empowerment are involved, the findings show that political empowerment is the lowest. It indicates that in other countries and cases around the world, community participation in political decision-making issues is the most prominent [23,24].

5.1.2. Empowerment Evaluation among Dimensions and Factors

• Economic empowerment dimension

In the dimension of economic empowerment, the average value of “tourism development has greatly promoted the local economic development” is the highest, which is 4.02. The residents generally agree that the tourism of Zhujiajiao ancient town is developing rapidly, which has a significant effect on promoting the local development. The average score of “fair and reasonable distribution of tourism income among government, community residents and scenic spots” is only 3.02, with a mean square deviation of 1.29, indicating that the distribution of tourism income in Zhujiajiao ancient town is uneven. During the interviews and investigation, we learned that the 10 yuan per person entrance ticket of Zhujiajiao scenic area was canceled after 2008. Only a few small scenic spots in the scenic area are charged with scenic spot tickets, while ancient town sightseeing is free. The cancellation of tickets reduces the management cost, enhances the attraction of the scenic spot, and improves the tourism image of Zhujiajiao. The scenic spot management committee and tourism companies are responsible for the development of scenic spots. The open business model promotes the development of catering, accommodation, and other tourism-related industries. Residents (accounting for 35.8%) suggested they have obtained the benefits brought by the tourism development and improved their quality of life. They were engaged in scenic spot related work, doing business, or renting houses. Another 44.2% of the residents said that they are not related to the scenic spot, and have not increased their income by tourism. From the interviews, many people indicated that the income flows to the local residents who have the property rights of land along the street, especially in the Spring Festival, Labor Day, National Day, and other national holidays. Tourism brings a small part of intermittent income to the community.

• Psychological empowerment dimension

In the dimension of psychological empowerment, the score of “consciously protect local culture” is the highest at 4.11. Of all residents, 82% said that tourism development made them aware of the importance of cultural characteristics of Zhujiajiao ancient town. They are willing to learn relevant knowledge of local history and voluntarily participate in protecting of local culture. Additionally, 69.9% of the residents are eager to participate in Zhujiajiao’s tourism planning and decision-making, and their awareness of rights is enhanced. Meanwhile, 65.6% of the residents said they were proud of the local community after Zhujiajiao’s tourism brand was launched, and 61.7% of the residents expressed they would like to participate in the training and attend tourism lectures. Yet, due to the catering industry’s vigorous development in the scenic spot, the surrounding cost of living is rising, and many residents reported that the parking space is relatively lacking on holidays. For this reason, 15.3% of the residents thought that their quality of life had declined. Compared with Xiaomin’s study of tourism empowerment in China’s Dong villages, the respondents’ scores on tourism psychological empowerment are also the highest among the four dimensions, with the average value ranging from 3.88 to 4.12 [4]. This is consistent with the result of this paper and that of Shixiu, who suggested the enhancing of psychological power should be placed as the core of community empowerment [26]. All these reflect that in China’s current social context, with the driving force of tourism to the community economy and the improvement of environment and facilities, people’s sense of pride, satisfaction, and happiness has dramatically improved.

• Social empowerment dimension

In the dimension of social empowerment, “tourism development has greatly improved local infrastructure (such as transportation, medical facilities, fire-fighting facilities, etc.)” scored the highest, 3.9 points. At the end of 2017, metro line 17 was put in use, attracting more individual tourists and making it convenient for local residents; grid management has been adopted in Zhujiajiao scenic area, and smoke alarms have been installed in every home. Besides, the inner road of Zhujiajiao ancient town is a pedestrian street, which is difficult for emergency vehicles to enter, so boats are set to patrol the waterway of the scenic spot, connecting the internal dwelling place and medical center of the scenic. All of these are the typical social empowerment performance. “Tourism development makes local residents increase opportunities for exchanges and cooperation with their neighbors” scored the lowest at 3.44. From the interview, people show that the local shops are more competitive than cooperative. The communication opportunities of local residents have not significantly improved by the tourism development of Zhujiajiao ancient town.

• Political empowerment dimension

In the four indicators of community empowerment, the score of the political empowerment is the lowest. “In the process of local tourism development, the government gives the community residents the right to participate in tourism decision-making” is the lowest score (2.97). During the interview, the Scenic Area Management Committee suggested that they would contact the neighborhood committee to seek the opinions of the residents’ representatives, but 68.85% of the respondents said that they had never participated in the tourism decision-making. It can be seen that the majority of grassroots residents fail to understand and participate in tourism development decisions in time and can only follow the arrangements. Political empowerment has not played its role, mainly due to the structure of long-term political system development. The government and relevant departments have not paid attention to protecting of residents’ rights in tourism development, resulting in residents’ low awareness of the political empowerment in tourism development [4]. As a result, residents do not know how to exercise and participate in decision-making and planning in tourism development. As a result, the local tourism development is still in the “top-down” model.

5.2. Discussion of Improvement Measures of Empowerment

According to the statistical results of all 17 indicators, there are two with an average value of more than 4, accounting for 11.76% of the total. The mean value of 10 indexes was between 3.5–4, accounting for 58.82% of the total. There are four indicators with an average value of 3–3.5, accounting for 23.53% of the total. There is only one factor with an average value lower than 3.

There are only two items with an average value of more than 4: “promote local economic development” and “protect local culture”, showing a more obvious peak. Among them, “protect local culture” ranked first. The ancient town has strong cultural soft power relying on the historical background. Residents’ cultural self-confidence and clear understanding of cultural protection provide a solid mass foundation for tourism empowerment. The fuzzy values of all factors are in the range of “neutral” and “approval”, which reflects this well. Meanwhile, economic development is the necessary result of the successful development of tourism activities. Another peak, “promoting local economic development,” not only reflects the economic effect of ancient town development but also greatly affects the degree of empowerment of other factors with better scores. Economic benefit has been brought by the construction of ancient town scenic areas through the exploration of profound local culture. As a result, the residents’ sense of pride is increased, and they have a deep love for their hometown and become eager to have more rights to participate in tourism. Economic development also provides the material basis for improving infrastructure and environmental quality, and residents’ tourism awareness provides spiritual support for them, so these two factors are at the forefront.

There are valley values (lower than 3.5) in the influencing factors. They are “reasonably distributed tourism income”, “have the right to participate in tourism decision-making”, “have the right to know about tourism”, “establish community tourism organization”, and “increasing communication among residents”. In essence, the former four items are caused by the conflict between individual interests and collective interests of residents under the market economy background. Due to the population base and current policies, the government often plays a leading role in the process of tourism decision-making, and personal interests are often ignored, which leads to the low recognition of the residents on the political level empowerment [4]. The enormous benefits brought by the development of ancient town tourism have also brought difficulties to the government and tourism companies in how to allocate. In order to realize the empowerment, on the one hand, the residents need to wake up their awareness of empowerment and actively participate in it; on the other hand, the government also needs to pay more attention to the residents, realize that the residents are also essential tourism resources of ancient towns, and guarantee the empowerment by issuing relevant policies, establishing tourism organizations and other measures. Besides, non-governmental organizations could play a significant role to fulfill their supervision obligation, do an excellent job in the link between the government and the residents and promote the implementation of community tourism empowerment in ancient town. If the first four valley values contradict residents and the external society, the fifth valley value, “increasing communication among residents,” is the contradiction within residents. According to the interview, most of the residents are excluded from the decision-making of the ancient town development, as it is contrary to their strong sense of belonging and pride in the ancient town. Therefore, there need to be joint efforts by non-governmental organizations and community residents to promote the awakening of residents’ democratic consciousness and collective consciousness to improve the communication between residents through tourism participation in the daily life of them.

5.3. Strategy of Community Participation Optimization

5.3.1. Establish Self-Management and Autonomous Community Tourism Organization

Through the investigation, the main contradiction of community participation is that between residents’ strong desire to participate and fewer opportunities to participate. At present, residents are in a relatively passive state of involvement. In the future, community participation should be changed from “passive” to “active”, which means “community residents centered” countermeasure should be incorporated into the community public governance system. Then the community participation mechanism would be optimized so that the dilemma of residents’ passive participation would be completely changed, and the “political empowerment” of residents would be truly realized. The specific approach is to establish local tourism operation organizations in which residents can participate independently, rather than relying entirely on external forces [35]. The members of the team include local town management personnel, actively participating residents, and the technical assistance team, which can be technical personnel from a professional academic team or personnel with mature experience in the development of an ancient town. Through periodic technical assistance, the governance model “self-management and autonomy” of community residents will be set, and the right to learn and decision-making of tourism will be handed over to the residents.

5.3.2. Formulate the Rules of income Distribution of Participation

The uneven distribution of tourism income reflected in the survey is fundamentally caused by the conflict between individual interests and collective interests of residents. Only when the distribution of parts is closely combined with the specific tasks and objectives of the protection and development of ancient towns can the enthusiasm of residents be aroused. At the same time, opportunities can be created for residents to get more benefits in the tourism participation to improve the “economic empowerment” correspondingly. Therefore, we must establish governance rules to encourage and restrict community residents to participate in the protection and tourism through the clear formulation of specific tasks and income distribution rules [36]. For example, a small part of tourism income belongs to the collective, and most of it belongs to the individual. In this way, residents’ enthusiasm for active participation can be stimulated, and economic benefits can be obtained by independently renovating the ancient town’s environment and participating in tourism reception. Of course, there is no absolute fairness in the distribution of income. Still the more detailed the rules are, the more contract spirit and empowerment awareness of residents will be cultivated so as to promote the healthy and sustainable development of the ancient town.

5.3.3. Implement the Ability Training of Community Participation in Tourism

In order to increase the power, it is necessary not only to establish self-governing organizations and income distribution rules but also to implement the training of community residents’ participation through a variety of ways. In the survey, residents said that they are “very willing to participate in tourism training”, but in reality, there are few opportunities and skills to participate in the training, which affects the residents’ psychological empowerment. To solve this problem, it is necessary to strengthen high-level training for residents, including Putonghua, foreign language, computer technology, tourism services, and other skills, so as to apply it to intelligent tourism management, high-quality reception, and other aspects [5,36]. Community self-management and autonomy need to improve the management and technical level from the internal power, which can attract and encourage young migrant workers to return to their hometown to participate, and also to avoid the cultural empty nest phenomenon caused by population replacement, so that the ancient town will radiate new vitality with the active participation of local residents. In the future, the development of ancient towns will carry out the cultural tourism integration products and take the route of high-quality and customization, which need to improve the technology and ability of community residents.

5.3.4. Provide a Participation Platform to Enhance Community Neighborhood Communication

Neighborhood communication is the basic needs of community residents. The research also reflects that residents hope to “enhance the communication between residents”. Under the influence of tourism on the community, more attention should be paid to the creation of a public platform to promote participation and to enhance the communication and daily recreation between residents and neighbors, which is an essential embodiment of “social empowerment”. The ancient town belongs to people. Tourists are short-term visitors, so the development of the ancient town should first improve the quality of life of residents, enhance the exchange of community residents, and then attract tourists to share and experience the unique local culture. Therefore, with the development of the ancient town, the technical assistance team can help local residents to build public participation space, display local characteristics, such as historical and cultural exhibition hall, community bookstore and library, reading room, site for cultural experience, etc., which can significantly show their artistic confidence. Besides, they can also regularly carry out many activities, including city walking, architectural reading, and cultural salon in the ancient town, in order to build a living ancient town with vitality in which the tourists and residents coexist. Let the tourism become the binder for the residents’ communication and sustain the cultural context of the ancient town in modern times.

6. Conclusions

The AHP-comprehensive fuzzy evaluation method is an evaluation method combining AHP and comprehensive fuzzy evaluation. The specific steps are to determine the weight of each indicator through the analytic hierarchy process, and then to evaluate the empirical research through the comprehensive fuzzy analysis method, convert qualitative to quantitative, and finally draw a relatively objective conclusion. This method, combined with empirical research, can reflect the degree of community tourism empowerment in ancient town directly and scientifically. This is a useful supplement to the research system of community tourism empowerment and has specific practical guiding significance. The application of AHP in tourism empowerment can be extended to other areas and other types of heritage sites where residents play a significant role [4]. Besides, due to the method’s advantages of combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, it is suitable to be widely used in other economic and social fields to evaluate social benefits [37] and economic influence [38,39,40].

The fuzzy evaluation results of tourism empowerment in Zhujiajiao community show that the overall empowerment degree of Zhujiajiao ancient town community is between “not bad” and “good”. Economic empowerment, psychological empowerment, social empowerment and political empowerment are all between “not bad” and “good”. The evaluation result of psychological empowerment is the best, and political empowerment is the worst. Residents agree with the current situation of empowerment in three dimensions of economy, psychology, and society, and they are neutral to political empowerment. However, on the whole, historic town management in China is government-led, therefore community participation happens to a relatively low degree. China is encouraged to learn from international practices when developing contextualized management approaches to face rapid urbanization challenges better [1].

Based on the characteristics of ancient town tourism and the actual situation, this paper puts forward the improvement measures from four stakeholders’ perspectives. Precisely, the government should actively guide and improve the system of community participation; non-governmental organizations should strengthen publicity and actively promote community empowerment. Relevant enterprises should pay special attention to cooperation with the community and increasing residents’ tourism revenue. Residents should actively participate in tourism activities and integrate them into their lives to ensure the community empowerment and sustainable development of tourism in ancient towns. Furthermore, discovering how to localize the concept of community participation from a self-government perspective is the goal of further research at this stage. This paper gives several practical strategies, including establishing self-managing community tourism organization, making rules on income distribution, training of community participation ability, enhancing community neighborhood communication and cooperation to improve the community participation mechanism and public governance ability of the ancient town. Strategies in this paper have practical significance for tourism sustainability of historical towns.

There are still some limitations in the research. Firstly, as many evaluation factors relate to tourism empowerment, the selection of them inevitably has a certain subjectivity which needs to be further improved. Secondly, due to the limitations of time, energy, funds, and other aspects, the sample size of this study is relatively small, and more samples will make the study more representative. Thirdly, we chooe the traditional 5-point scale; perhaps, a 7 points scale would be more precise, and I will improve this in the future. Furthermore, more studies are expected to compare different ancient towns’ community participation around Shanghai suburbs or make a comparative study of different years.