遗产地旅游小企业社会责任对可持续经营的影响

Influences of Corporate Social Responsibility on Sustainable Operation of Small Tourism Enterprises Located at Heritage Sites in China

小企业是旅游业的重要组成部分。文章从社会责任视角,对大理和阳朔两个遗产地旅游小企业主进行深度访谈和问卷调查,并采用因子分析、回归分析等方法,就旅游小企业社会责任对企业可持续经营的影响进行实证研究。研究发现,遗产地旅游小企业社会责任的履行有助于促进企业可持续经营,这种正向作用更多体现为对小企业非财务绩效的显著正影响;但社会责任各维度对遗产地旅游小企业可持续经营的影响存在差异。结合对旅游小企业主的深度访谈,文章对实证结果进一步分析发现,社会责任各维度责任的履行更多是出于遗产地旅游小企业主自利动机,他们从自身可以直接控制和实施的角度来看待社会责任。在此基础上,文章提出如何提升其社会责任意识、促进企业可持续经营的政策建议。

China＇ s tourism industry has developed very fast since China started its economic reform in 1978. Considering that small firms are the main part of China＇ s tourism industry, this article focuses on small tourism firms＇ social responsibility. Specifically, small tourism inns located at heritage sites are taken as examples because of the wider scope of their social responsibility. Generally, it is not only that tourists spend most of time in these inns during their journeys, but also there are close connections between these inns and local residents, natural environment, or local heritage. Limited by data sources, questionnaires were used to collect data for this research. Firstly, based on a review of literature and an analysis of the characteristics of these small tourism enterprises, social responsibility is defined from five aspects, including products and services, employees, residents, natural environment and heritage. Sustainable operation of small tourism enterprises is defined from two aspects, financial performance and non-financial performance. Questionnaires and interview outline were designed to gather information from the owners of small tourism enterprises. As Dali and Yangshuo are typical and famous natural heritage sites, these two areas were chosen as the study sites to collect questionnaires and conduct interviews. The data were collected between July 25 and August 15, 2013 and between January 9 and February 10, 2014. Altogether 33 owners in Dali and 96 owners and 8 employees in Yangshuo were interviewed and 154 questionnaires were gathered-47 were collected from Dali and 107 from Yangshuo. The number of questionnaires is relatively small because we can get only one from one enterprise, and some owners were afraid of revealing their private information and refused to answer the questionnaire. Factor analysis and principle component analysis were carried out to understand small tourism enterprises＇ social responsibility. Moreover, we executed OLS regression to test the influences of small tourism enterprises＇ social responsibility on their sustainable operation. Here, sustainable operation, including financial and non-financial performance, was the dependent variable. Social responsibility variables were the main independent variables. Some control variables, such as age and sex of owner, size of the inns, were also included in the regression models. The empirical results showed that these enterprises＇ fulfilling social responsibility, especially community, natural environment, and products responsibility, brought positive influence on their sustainable operation mainly through significant influence on small tourism enterprises＇ non-financial performance. Moreover, executing environment responsibility and product responsibility well did help these small enterprises to improve their financial performance and non-finance performance respectively. But there existed no significant influence of employee or heritage protection responsibility on small tourism enterprises＇ sustainable operation. Finally, based on the true operational information of China＇ s small tourism enterprises obtained from interviews, some suggestions were made to improve their social responsibility, especially on employee and heritage protection aspects, to promote these enterprises＇ sustainable development.