Abstract for: Agriculture-Culture-Tourism Integration in Rural Revitalization: A Study of Grounded Theory based on Wuning County, China

With the rapid advancement of urbanization and industrialization, rural decline has become a major challenge faced by countries. To boost the rural revitalization, Agriculture-Culture-Tourism Integration was enshrined in China's 2024 No. 1 Central Document and became a national strategy to promote the coordinated growth of the rural economy, ecology, culture, and society. Understanding the mechanisms behind Agriculture-Culture-Tourism Integration could support policymakers develop effective proliferation of such integration for other regions. Based on the data collected from document reviews and semi-structured interviews, this study conducted a systematic analysis of the Agriculture-Cultural-Tourism Integration practice in Wuning County, China. In particular, the grounded theory is adopted to extract the variables and identify causal links. Then Causal Loop Diagrams are built to analyze the symbiotic mechanism of the Agriculture-Cultural-Tourism Integration as well as develop appropriate policies for sustainable development. The data analysis is in process. The potential outcomes are articulating the keys and bottlenecks to promoting Agriculture-Culture-Tourism Integration to achieve the goals of comprehensive rural revitalization (industrial prosperity, ecological livability, civilized customs, effective governance, and enriched lives). For example, the loops might include the rural resource utilization loop, environmental protection loop, culture heritage inheriting loop, agricultural products value loop, and so on. Agriculture-Culture-Tourism Integration is a complex and dynamic system. In this dynamic integration process, the boundaries between agriculture, culture and tourism industries are gradually dissolving and they are gradually merging in terms of resources, technology, products, markets, functions, etc., leading to a rapid increase in industrial competitiveness. But there are still many problems that need to be solved urgently.