Climate change in Chinese rural village: is the community aware? A case study in Cuandixia, using the Photovoice method

Purpose – In recent Chinese history, rural villages have suffered extensive depopulation due to the intensive of the country. In the early 1990s, the rediscovery of villages for tourism purposes caused a in approach to conservation policies and village management. Today, villages are subjected to change with mass tourism as a contributing factor. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether village community is climate change aware and to identify best practises for it./methodology/approach – In this case study, the authors adopted a visual research technique Photovoice. It is a research method which combines preliminary data collection and initial analysis. The main goals of adopting Photovoice are to enable community members to record and reflect community’s strengths and concerns, to promote dialogue and knowledge exchange among members regarding critical local social or environmental issues through small group discussion, to report to policymakers. – This research demonstrated that both visitors and hosts shared common thoughts on tourism, impacts and current actions regarding climate change. Age, level of education or origin did not and it shows a common awareness regarding the effects of climate change. It confirms the structural that local and expertise knowledge are complementary./value – At a time when awareness of climate change is affecting almost every debate concerning strategies, future planning, governance and action implementations, very little has been written the climate change impact on villages from a community perspective. Even less has been researched on are called “urban rural villages”, that are villages located at the close periphery of a large urban or cities in China.