https://doi.org/10.31449/inf.v43i3.2806 Informatica 43 (2019) 337–341 337 
Research on Development Mode of Intelligent Rural Tourism under 
Digital Background  
Chunlin Zhou 
School of Tourism and Event, Henan University of Economics and Law, China 
E-mail: zhouchunlin@huel.edu.cn 
http://www.huel.edu.cn 
Keywords: digital background; smart village; tourism development  
Received: July 15, 2019 
Intelligent rural tourism rapidly emerged under the digital background in China after the reform and 
development. Driven by the theme of China tourism administration's smart rural tourism year under 
digital background, the digital background smart rural tourism market has entered a period of vigorous 
development, accelerating the integration of tourism and agriculture, with forestry and other related 
industries. Since the late 1990s, China's rural areas have experienced four stages of spontaneous 
development, quantity expansion, standardized development and quality improvement. After more than 20 
years' active exploration, China has established a development path with Chinese characteristics and a 
smart rural tourism model under digital background. 
Povzetek: Opisan je razvoj inteligentnega kmečkega turizma na Kitajskem z metodami UI. 
 
1 Introduction 
Intelligent rural tourism rapidly emerged under the digital 
background in China after the reform and development. 
Driven by the theme of China tourism administration's 
smart rural tourism year under digital background, the 
digital background smart rural tourism market has entered 
a period of vigorous development, accelerating the 
integration of tourism and agriculture, with forestry and 
other related industries and industries. Since the late 
1990s, China's rural areas have experienced four stages of 
spontaneous development, quantity expansion, 
standardized development and quality improvement [1] 
[2]. After more than 20 years' active exploration, China 
has established a development path with Chinese 
characteristics and a smart rural tourism model under 
digital background. 
2 Research on the development 
mode of intelligent rural tourism 
under digital background 
2.1 Analysis of the development status of 
digital rural intelligent tourism in 
China 
In 2009, in order to upgrade China's smart rural tourism 
under digital background, the National Tourism 
Administration introduced a variety of new digital 
background smart rural tourism on the basis of provincial 
smart rural tourism with the digital background. The new 
concept of smart rural tourism is of great significance for 
enhancing the scale and quality of digital rural tourism [3]. 
In recent years, the digitized background of smart rural 
tourism reception capacity and income in China as shown 
in Table 1. 
Time 
Smart rural 
tourism 
reception (ten 
thousand) 
Smart rural 
tourism 
employees (ten 
thousand) 
Smart 
rural tourism 
income 
(billion) 
2010 1404 62 251 
2011 157 64 304 
2012 162 68 359 
2013 168 78 376 
Table 1: Intelligent rural tourism recipients, employees 
and income in China. 
An investigation into the smart rural tourism in China 
found that the digital background smart rural tourism 
products presented traditional singleness and lack of 
diversity. The overall level stayed at a low level of 
offering accommodation, agricultural products, parties 
and souvenirs [4]. The number of smart rural tourism and 
 
Figure 1: Number of intelligent rural tourism 
receptionists in China (Unit: 100,000). 

338 Informatica 43 (2019) 337–341 C. Zhou 
the number of receptionists in China in recent years is 
shown in Figure 1. 
2.2 Digital background definition of 
intelligent rural tourism development 
model 
This paper defines the digital background smart rural 
tourism development model as the chain-type relationship 
formed by certain departments supporting digital rural 
intelligence tourism activities through certain economic 
relationships [5]. The smart rural tourism development 
model comprises of a horizontal extension, vertical 
associated function chain, product chain and cultural value 
chain. It appears as a network structure consisting of 
horizontal cooperation and vertical supply and demand. Its 
expression is as follows: 
 
𝑇 = 𝐻 ( 𝑖 , 𝑗 , 𝑠 , 𝑏 )
          
                                                   (1) 
In this concept, there are the two points to be 
explained. For one thing, some departments on the digital 
background smart rural tourism development model are 
horizontally cooperative. Each industry in the smart rural 
tourism development model can directly provide tourism 
products for tourists, but they need to work together to 
provide tourists with complete tourism product. For 
another, if the collaboration is not effective, the poor 
performance of one of the industries will weaken the 
development pattern of the entire digital background smart 
rural tourism [6]. The change relationship is as shown in 
formula (2) as follows: 
                                  (2) 
2.3 Digital background characteristics of 
intelligent rural tourism development 
model 
(1) Reticulation structure 
The traditional mode of manufacturing rural tourism 
development is based on the vertical industrial linkage of 
the product process division. Products are processed 
through upstream, middle, and downstream enterprises 
and finally presented to consumers [7]. The background of 
the digital background smart rural tourism development 
model includes not only the vertical supply and demand 
relationship, but also the horizontal collaboration 
relationship. Its mathematical expression is as follows: 
𝐶 = ( 𝑄 , 𝐹 1
, 𝐹 2
, 𝐹 𝑟 )
                                              
     (3) 
Digital background intelligent rural tourism products 
have comprehensive features [8]. Tourists enjoy a range 
of tourism services from the time they leave their place of 
residence for the digital background smart rural tourism 
destinations. In other words, different from the final 
products of the rural tourism development model for the 
consumer, the various departments on the digital 
background smart rural tourism development model can 
directly provide tourism consumers with tourism products. 
However, each department can only provide part of the 
product [9]. If tourists are to be able to experience the full 
digital background smart rural tourism products, they need 
effective collaboration and cooperation among all sectors 
of the rural tourism development model. The main 
coordination method is shown in formula (4) as follows: 
𝑃 ( 𝐴 𝑙 + 𝑠 | 𝑜 𝑙 ) = ∏ (
𝑘 𝑙 + 𝑠 𝑛 𝑙 + 𝑠 )
𝑠 𝑠 = 1
            
                           (4) 
(2) The characteristics of digital background intelligent 
rural tourism 
The rural nature is the essential attribute of the digital 
background intelligent rural tourism. The reality includes 
the rural nature of tourism resources, tourism products, 
tourism market and tourism benefits; the rural nature can 
be divided into rural culture and rural landscape [10]. The 
digital background essence of the rural tourism is the rural 
culture. The rural culture with nationality, history and 
region is the essential attribute of the digital background 
intelligent rural tourism. Rural culture as a concrete 
description is the property of the digital background 
intelligent rural tourism. Its mathematical expression is as 
follows: 
𝑔 = ∑ 𝑏 𝑖𝑗 𝑖 , 𝑗 𝑞 𝑖 𝑞 𝑗           
                                   (5) 
The determination of core value of the digital 
background smart rural tourism development model is 
conducive to a clear direction for development. As to the 
core of the general tourism rural tourism development 
model, the traditional view is that travel agencies are the 
hubs linking the six major elements of tourism, while 
under the digital background, the reconstruction of the 
value chain of the tourism industry aims at reconfirming 
the core node of the chain, and that is, establishing a 
tourism industry value chain model with tourism sites and 
tourist attractions as the core [11]. The core of tourism and 
rural tourism development model is tourism and tourist 
attractions, and the tour experience of tourism sites and 
tourist attractions. The core value is tourism and rural 
tourism development model. However, the digital 
background smart rural tourism is a more special form of 
tourism. the mathematical expressions of the four 
traditional forms of digital rural tourism in China and eight 
new forms of business are as follows: 
𝑀 𝑆𝐾 = ( 𝑓 , 𝑤 )
             
                                           (6) 
People choose smart rural tourism for various reasons, 
some to taste rural food, some to experience agricultural 
activities, and some to enjoy the rural scenery. That is to 
say, people choose smart rural tourism for the specific 
rural cultural atmosphere. It is a kind of cultural yearning 
for rural food culture, agricultural culture, and rural 
landscape culture. Therefore, this paper holds that the core 
value of the digitalized background intelligent rural 
tourism development model should be rural cultural 
experience. The value system centering on the intelligent 
rural tourism cultural experience is the basis for realizing 
the value-added rural tourism development model [12]. 
Culture is a description of a special way of life, and then 
the digital background smart rural tourism is a description 
of the special rural lifestyle. The rural culture includes 
2
2
()
2
()
xa
b
i A x e 
−
−
=

Research on Development Mode of Intelligent Rural Tourism Informatica 43 (2019) 337–341 339 
rural food culture, rural living culture, rural landscape 
culture, agricultural culture, rural product culture, rural 
entertainment in terms of culture and so on, and these 
aspects are all examples of rural special lifestyles as 
shown in Table 2: 
Rural cultural 
experience 
manifestation 
Performance description 
Rural food 
culture experience 
Including rural eating habits, 
methods, and allegorical relations 
with literature and art 
Rural 
characteristic folk 
customs experience 
Including the selection of rural 
residential sites, construction 
techniques, architectural structures, 
spatial layout, and aesthetic ideas, 
religious concepts, etc. 
Rural landscape 
/ pastoral scenery 
experience 
Different from the 
comprehensive performance of 
various phenomena such as the 
humanities, society, and nature of 
the city. 
Rural 
entertainment 
culture / farming 
activities experience 
Including picking, fishing and 
other farming or recreational 
activities. 
Table 2: Multi-dimensional performance of core values 
of smart rural tourism development model with digital 
background. 
(3) The characteristics of China's intelligent rural tourism 
evaluation 
There are many perspectives on intelligent rural 
tourism evaluation. For example, the stability of rural 
tourism development model can be evaluated from the 
government's point of view. The cooperation of rural 
tourism development model can be evaluated from the 
perspective of the enterprise [13]. With tourism 
development model for performance evaluation, this paper 
chooses to evaluate the rural tourism development model 
of China's digital background smart rural tourism from the 
perspective of tourists. There are two main advantages in 
selecting tourist perspectives: firstly, assessing the 
advantages and disadvantages of the rural tourism 
development model from the tourists' perspective is closer 
to the target market; secondly, the use of questionnaires on 
the tourists is for the measurement of rural tourism 
development model, and the result is more objective and 
easier to measure. This paper selected digital background 
smart rural tourism catering, digital background smart 
rural tourism accommodation, digital background smart 
rural tourism products, digital background smart rural 
tourism scenic spots, digital background smart rural 
tourism traffic, digital background smart rural tourism 
entertainment activities for the project indicator layer, and 
there are several factor layers under the indicator layer, as 
shown in formula (7) as follows: 
𝛱 ( 𝑎 𝑖 ) = 𝑌 ( 𝑎 𝑖 | 𝑃𝑟 𝑒 ( 𝑎 𝑖 ) )
         
                       (7) 
2.4 Data analysis of smart rural tourism 
development model under digital 
background 
(1) Questionnaire design 
The questionnaire in this paper is divided into two 
parts: firstly, the demographics and travel characteristics 
of tourists, including the demographic characteristics of 
tourists and tourists' travel characteristics. Secondly, the 
development model and importance. Development model 
survey factors use the five-point scale as the evaluation 
criteria for index evaluation. The survey objectives are: 
development model and importance. This paper focuses 
on field surveys of smart rural tourism sites with digital 
backgrounds in China. 288 questionnaires were 
distributed and 268 valid questionnaires were collected. 
(2) Reliability analysis 
A questionnaire with good reliability shows good 
stability and consistency. Reliability analysis is the 
analysis method that obtains the reliability of the 
questionnaire through the evaluation method, and uses the 
reliability to evaluate whether the questionnaire has good 
reliability and stability [14]. In general, the same question 
in the questionnaires of different subjects tends to be 
consistent, indicating that there is no large sample-to-
sample error in the questionnaire survey and the reliability 
of the questionnaire is higher, and the reliability is lower. 
Reliability generally uses α coefficient as its evaluation 
index. The coefficient is generally between 0 and 1 [15]. 
The higher the reliability, the closer of α coefficient is to 
1, which means that the more stable the questionnaire, and 
the mathematical expression is as follows: 
𝑝 = ( 𝛼 , 𝑣 , ℎ , ℎ
𝑤 , . . . , ℎ
𝑤 𝑛 )
                          
              (8) 
Under normal circumstances, α coefficient is above 
0.70, which indicates that the questionnaire is of good 
reliability and can be used for the next analysis. If α 
coefficient is lower than 0.35, and the reliability is low, 
the stability of the questionnaire is insufficient, and it 
cannot be used. Among them, the reliability of the 
questionnaire is acceptable [16]. In this study, SPSS tool 
was used to analyze the reliability of the questionnaires 
used, and their consistency was checked to ensure the 
quality and credibility of the questionnaires. After 
inspection, the overall reliability of the questionnaire used 
in this survey was α=0.956, and the reliability of 
development model α=0.954, and the importance of 
reliability α=0.961, all in line with Cronbach's standards, 
showing good reliability of the questionnaire.  
(3) Development model result analysis 
In this survey, men accounted for 45% of the total 
number of samples, and women accounted for 55%, and 
the gender ratio is more balanced. In terms of age 
structure, the proportion of tourists aged 22-38 is the 
highest. From the point of education, undergraduates and 
college graduates accounted for the most. In view of 
residence, the majority of the tourists are Chinese. We can 
calculate the mean and standard deviation of the 
development model of 20 evaluation indicators, and sort 
them according to the average size. Through observation, 

340 Informatica 43 (2019) 337–341 C. Zhou 
it can be seen that among the three-level indicators, 
tourists are more satisfied with the rural characteristics of 
tourism accommodation, rural characteristics and tastes of 
tourism and catering. The secondary models of 
development are the quality, price, and prices of tourism 
and catering. Paired sample T-test is a statistical method 
to test whether there is a significant difference in the 
overall mean of two paired samples. Paired samples can 
be two sets of sampled data for the same variable, and can 
also be considered as two different aspects of a problem 
[17]. To conduct paired sample T test, firstly we need to 
find the difference between each pair of samples, and then 
compare the mean and the average value of the 0 
relationship, with weak sample no difference and the mean 
value should be near 0, otherwise the sample is different 
[18]. In this study, the paired sample T test was used to 
analyze the difference between the importance of the 
questionnaire and the development model (the mutual 
comparison under the same indicator). If the difference 
was not significant, the importance of the indicator and the 
development model were examined. The performance of 
the entry is different, but conversely indicates significant, 
that is, and there is a certain distinction between the 
evaluation of the importance and the development model 
[19]. 
3 Conclusion 
The rural tourism industry chain is different from the 
general manufacturing industry chain. This paper defines 
it as a chain-type relationship that supports various sectors 
of rural tourism activities through certain economic 
relationships. [20] In the rural tourism industry chain, 
there are horizontal links between industries, and various 
industries face consumers at the same time; any individual 
link in the rural tourism industry chain can directly 
provide tourism products for rural tourists, but they cannot 
provide complete tourism products. The rural tourism 
industry chain is different from the general industrial 
chain, and its chain core is diversified, and the core value 
of the rural tourism industry chain is the experience of 
rural culture. The digital background intelligent rural 
tourism development model core value should be rural 
cultural experience. [21]The value system of the rural 
tourism development model centering on the digital 
background intelligent rural tourism cultural experience is 
the basis for realizing the value-added of the rural tourism 
development model.. 
4 Acknowledgement 
The research in this paper was supported by Henan 
Science and Technology Research Program (International 
Science and Technology Cooperation Area) Project in 
2015: Research on Safety Management and Technology 
for Large-scale Festival Events (NO. 152102410043), and 
Henan Science and Technology Department Project in 
2016: Innovative Research on Safety Management of 
Large-scale Festival Events (NO. 162400410023).. 
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Dissatisfied General Satisfaction 
Very 
satisfied 
Average 
Rural Tourism 
Catering 
 
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Environmental 
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Price 15 45 93 72 18 3.8 
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Price 5 33 107 98 4 3.7 
Rural tourism 
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