Identifying the critical stakeholders for the sustainable development of architectural heritage of tourism: From the perspective of China

Abstract

Architectural heritages, especially heritages of tourism, were destroyed in the process of urban reconstruction of China because of lacking protection from stakeholders. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify the critical stakeholders to perform the responsibility of protection. The paper, focusing on architectural heritage of tourism, aims to identify the most important stakeholders for making them realize their critical roles in maintaining architectural heritages. Moreover, this paper also aims to evaluate the enthusiasm of stakeholders. As a result, the stakeholders with high importance and enthusiasm would be the critical stakeholders in maintaining architectural heritages. Thirteen stakeholders were selected through comprehensive literature review and the reality of China. A questionnaire survey was conducted with the qualified respondents in Mainland China. A five-point Likert scale and other statistical methods were used for achieving the results of evaluation. The findings demonstrated local government, central government, real estate development enterprise, expert groups, administration of architectural heritage protection, and construction company of architectural heritage are considered as the critical stakeholders for the sustainable development (SD) of architectural heritage of tourism. Finally, some helpful implications were introduced for improving the efficiency of participation and cooperation among all stakeholders.