Questionnaire design

In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of tourism impacts on Mt Qiyun residents’

daily life and their attitudes toward tourism development, as well as explore visitors’

motivation and satisfaction about Qiyun tourism, the author also employed quantitative techniques. Three questionnaires were sent to three groups, including residents below the mountain (n=768), residents on the mountain (n=75), visitors (n=1415). Each questionnaire comprised both open and closed ended questions. The data will be analysed by CATPAC software (for open ended questions) and SPSS 20.0 software (for closed ended questions).

4.4.5.1 Residents’ questionnaire

Based on the thesis objectives and semi-structured interview questions, two similar questionnaires were designed for both the residents on the mountain and below the mountain, thereby making it possible to compare differences in experiences and perceptions. The questionnaire was used to explore residents’ evaluation of tourism impact in their village and personal life arising from economic, social-cultural, environment changes; the residents’

satisfaction with tourism development and their suggestions as to further tourism development. The questionnaire comprised four sections.

Section one: Your usual place of residence

Under this section, both groups of residents were asked to answer whether they lived in Mt Qiyun village, and how long he/she had lived there. The aim of this question is to examine if attitudes and opinions differ because of distance from the core tourist attraction. In addition, residents living below the mountain were also asked about the frequency of visiting Mt Qiyun and the purpose of their visit.

Section two: Changes in the Qiyun Mountain and your village In this section, there are five open-ended questions to be answered:

 What do you think are the special characteristics of Qiyun Mountain ?

 What changes have you observed in the mountain and your own village in the last 2 years

 Which of these changes do you think are beneficial for your village?

 Which of these changes do you think are disadvantageous for your village?

 People say the village nearby the mountain is a special place to live? Do you feel this way?

115

Those questions helped to prepare a general outline for residents’ perceptions of tourism development in their village. The answers were analyzed by CATPAC software to identify themes important for the research.

Section three: Importance of tourism to your village

In this section participants were asked to evaluate their perceptions of tourism impact in their village, and their attitude toward tourism development. There are 32 questions for those living in the village and 34 questions for residents living below the mountain. Each question used a seven-point scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree or this has no importance to 7=

strongly agree or extremely support, while 0 stood for “no opinion”.

Section four: personally information

This section was mainly used to generate the basic social-demographic data including gender, age, and income.

Visitors’ questionnaire

The visitors’ questionnaire was used to ascertain tourists’ expectation before their visit, their motives for visiting Qi Yun Mountain, their activities during the visit, and their satisfaction and assessment after visit. Those data are essential for the author to have a deeper understanding of Qiyun Mountain from the visitors’ standpoint. One rationale for the questionnaire is that the “outsider perspective did allow tourists to have a more comparative knowledge, gained from touring other cities, enable them to see uniqueness in what residents would view as commonplace and ordinary” (Lew, 1992, p.50)

Section 1

In the first section, three open-ended questions were asked:

 List up to four short phrases or words about your expectations prior to your visit to the Village

 List up to four short phrases or words about your assessment of the Village now that you have seen it

 Using a scale of 1 to 10 – where 10 represents the maximum level of satisfaction with your visit, to provide assessment of your overall level of satisfaction.

116

As mentioned previously, those data were analysed by CATPAC software to identify themes to help generate data of a qualitative nature and thereby supplement quantitative data.

Section 2 Reasons for visiting Mt Qiyun

There are 12 motives listed in this section. Every item used a seven-point scale ranging from 1= of no importance to me to 7= very important to me. The 12 motivations could be generally classified into several groups, namely: see the beauty of the village and mountain; want to pray at the mountain because of Taoism beliefs; and simply interest in Chinese and heritage.

Section 3 Your stay in the Village

In this section, respondents were required to describe their stay in the village, including:

 Whether visitors stay overnight or not, and the duration of their visit to the mountain

 What kind of activities are conducted during their visit, including “to pray at any of the shrines?” , “participate in a religious service at the temple”, “have a meal at a restaurant” “buy any incense sticks”, “take photographs” and so on

 The number of adults and children accompanied in this trip

 The total money the visitor spent in this visit

Based on those results, it is hoped that author can examine the question “whether the visitor have different motivation, or satisfaction because of different visit/stay situations?”

Section 4 Level of satisfaction with your visit

Thirteen statements with regard to tourist satisfaction and assessments were listed in this section. Each statement also used a seven-point scale ranging from 1= “very strongly disagree”

to 7= “very strongly agree”. Generally, the satisfaction statements are designed based on the motivation items; for example:

 The village was as scenic as I expected

 I truly felt that the mountain is a sacred place

 I found the history and heritage to be of interest to me

 I was able to pray at the shrines and temple in peace

 ……

117

Section 5 : Assessment of tourism and Taoism in Qiyun Mountain

This section only has one open ended question, which asked visitor to indicate their thoughts about Tourism, Taoism and this village.

Section 6: Visitors’ personal information

This section was used to access the visitors’ social-demographic information, including gender, age, travel group, income, education, and usual place of permanent residence.

Photo 4.3 Photography of questionnaire conducting for resident and visitor