An Investigation of Rural Spatial Value Co-Creation Using Sociological Field Theory: A Case Study of Xiaozhou Village in Guangzhou ()
1. Introduction
As a spatial carrier for inheriting and promoting ethnic culture, the value of rural areas is shifting from a single economic development to a comprehensive and diverse investment (Huang & Shi, 2021) . Rural space production is overcoming the shackles of traditional aesthetics and opinions by exemplifying creative wisdom with visual characteristics and architectural styles of different times (Wang, Zhuang, Ma, & Li, 2022) . A rural space with outstanding architectural features, strong industrial support, rich culture, striking landscape, and amicable interethnic relationships can showcase the uniqueness of local experiential activities, the dispersion of spatiotemporal structure, the inheritance of cultural heritage, and participation in local customs.
Driven by the processes of local globalization, rural gentrification, tourism commercialization, and national modernization, the various forms of value creation have played a positive role in attracting employment for villagers by helping them escape poverty and become economically stable and by protecting the rural environment (Yang & Xu, 2022) . The participation of both residents and tourists has a positive impact on the achievement of both parties’ goals and is becoming the leading form of developing high-quality rural tourism (Chen, Cottam, & Lin, 2020) . Under the service-oriented logic of value co-creation, tourists are no longer resources flowing outside rural spaces, but rather, they are value creators who participate in local communities (Font, English, Gkritzali, & Tian, 2021) .
Rural tourism research focuses on the trend of shifting tourist attractions toward the needs of community residents, focusing not only on tourists’ loyalty to certain destinations, but also highlighting the core concept of humanistic care for the livelihood of rural community residents (Stylidis, Woosnam, & Tasci, 2022) . Local governments’ use of external capital to promote the development of rural tourism has led to issues such as insufficient tourism empowerment loss of authenticity, lack of development momentum, insufficient participation of diverse entities, and low efficiency of industrial integration (Liu, Chiang, & Ko, 2023; Tian, Stoffelen, & Vanclay, 2021) . The abuse of rural resources, both cultural and natural, has also led to the frequent occurrence of value co-destruction, where at least one party’s expectations were not met. These situations result in a structural imbalance between the supply and demand of tourism products, making it difficult to establish an effective rural value chain and value co-creation opportunities (Tian et al., 2021) . Based on sociological field theory and through the observation and investigation of Xiaozhou Village, this paper analyzes the value co-creation mechanisms in different types of field construction, and reveals the impact of value co-creation on rural space production and the village’s economic sustainability.
This article analyzes the value co-creation of field construction in Xiaozhou Village, southeast of Haizhu District, Guangzhou City. Xiaozhou Village was founded in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, representing more than 700 years of history. It is a typical riverside town that combines the comb-style layout of traditional villages in the Lingnan region with the dense water-traffic network of the Pearl River Delta (Figure 1).
2. Value Co-Creation and Field Based on Sociological Theory
2.1. Value Co-Creation Theory
Value co-creation enriches the cultural context of rural space, and expands from
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Figure 1. The geographical location of Xiaozhou Village.
simple exchange value to more complex experience, situational, socio-situational, and cultural-situational values (La et al., 2021) . This process involves consumers participating in value creation activities as creators, thereby producing products that are ultimately consumed by visitors and providing them with a unique experience. For example, tourists can participate in the design and development of tourism products by providing feedback, suggestions, and opinions, making them more in line with their needs and preferences (Byon, Zhang, & Jang, 2022) . This is a collaborative production process that generates new value, linking multiple factors such as service provision on the supply side and experiential consumption on the demand side (Hansen, 2019) . The process of value co-creation has promoted the transformation of rural culture into product supply chains, collaboration chains, and value chains, not only laying a solid foundation for the sustainable development of rural social culture, but also playing a positive role in building cultural and creative brands (Chen, Yuan, & Zhu, 2022) . With the integration of rural economic space, social space, and cultural space, the generation of value creation spaces has, to some extent, been promoted, transforming rural tourism from “providing products or services for tourists” to “how tourists use products or services to achieve their goals” (Benur & Bramwell, 2015; Rahmiati, Akmaliah, Bakri, Yunita, & Grace, 2020) . Moreover, the operational focus of rural tourism has shifted to the tourist consumption process, consumption experience, and consumption environment construction (Crowther & Donlan, 2011) . Under this kind of service-oriented logic, rural tourism has shifted from focusing on the development of cultural elements such as rural architecture, traditional craft products, clothing, and cuisine, to f the development of tacit cultural elements such as the production process, rituals, festivals, beliefs, music, dance, sports, ethics, values, cognitive models, and aesthetic taste (Lusch & Nambisan, 2015; Yang et al., 2021) . Rural spatial production has evolved from a tangible resource to operational resource that focuses more on vibrant, intangible resources such as knowledge, technology, and innovation, creating a multidimensional perception for visitors, including “sound, vision, smell, taste, and touch”. Value co-creation further stimulates the consumer impulse of tourists to repeatedly experience, transforming the main body of tourism operation from a “leading actor” of product production to a “customer or consultant” that participates actively in order to maximize the value co-creation process of rural spaces.
Driven by high-tech innovation, value creation in rural spaces has shifted from a two-sided interaction between tourism enterprises and customers, to a dynamic network of multiple socio-economic actors, involving the multifaceted creation of value by the networks of companies and various entities, including rural social organizations and civil society organizations (Perks, Gruber, & Edvardsson, 2012) . Modern technology centered around artificial intelligence effectively identifies and allocates required tourism resources, enhances the connection between tourism development and production, consumption, and the network environment, and promotes the interests of multiple service entities in experiential activities. This technology makes value co-creation activities develop in a more reasonable direction, thereby achieving the core goal of value co-creation in value chain service activities (Knani, Echchakoui, & Ladhari, 2022; Koo, Xiang, Gretzel, & Sigala, 2021) . In terms of carrying out value creation, this process cannot be separated from the creation of values such as agricultural value chains, improving social ecological chains, and restoring rural cultural self-confidence, thereby promoting the transformation and formation of physical space production into a social and cultural landscape (Smidt & Jokonya, 2022) . Moreover, with the adoption of cutting edge technology in the construction of intelligent villages, the production of cultural spaces has gradually entered the virtualization stage, promoting the development of immersive scenes that combine virtual reality and real images with the assistance of AI (Sirazhiden, 2020) . This virtual space in rural areas is a “metauniverse” space that integrates physical, spiritual, social, cultural, and objective knowledge spaces, maximizing the participation of community residents, and greatly enriching visitors’ spatial experience and perception (Lee et al., 2021) . The construction of a metauniverse in parallel with the integration of rural landscapes has promoted the interaction between residents and tourists, knowledge transfer, and value creation, making the development of field construction schemes dominated by different themes an important choice for spatial production. Only by selecting tourism planning that is suitable for rural spaces, can we construct new fields that are suitable for value creation in these contexts (Zheng, Wang, Li, & Guo, 2021) .
2.2. The Field Theory of Sociology
A field is a social space established by a network of different social objective relationships. This network is not fixed but rather changes according to reality and possibility, past and present, and is itself dynamic. In Bourdieu’s sociological theory, a field is not a static space but instead is a dynamic space in which energy flows, containing interactions between forces everywhere. These forces are privileges constructed by actors through power in order to improve their status (Nash, 2018) . Rural sightseeing and leisure activities are creative processes that rely on space for tourists to experience the locally specific value that non-urban places provide. This process of value creation in various fields enables tourists to interact with community stakeholders to achieve their respective goals, thereby achieving a balance between the comfortable, urban perception of experience and maintaining an adaptive social relationship in rural areas (Galani-Moutafi, 2013) . The value co-creation process integrates all aspects of tourists’ experience in the service chain, integrating the experience value, landscape immersion co-creation value, leisure service-health care value, and traditional practice research value possessed by rural space into a diversified value generation system. This system also expands the meanings and interpretations of rural physical, social, cultural, and virtual spaces (Buonincontri, Morvillo, Okumus, & van Niekerk, 2017) . There is competition among various parties in this field, and the logic that determines the strength of competition is capital. Moreover, if a certain type of capital is not associated with the field, it is difficult for that field to exist and function. Capital is not only the goal of competition in a field’s activities, but it is also the means used to compete. In other words, the existence of each field is linked to a market, connecting the most representative producers and consumers of experiential services in the field. Embedding the process of value co-creation into the construction of field will help enrich the interactive content and profit points of field nodes and improve the level of value creation of the rural settlement.
From the perspective of organizational level implementation, the value co-creation of rural space is inseparable from the construction of a series of fields, which means that value co-creation depends on the process of carrying out spatial fields to complete. According to sociology, society is a large field with economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital, among other types, and different fields have different operational logic rules, all of which emphasize the need for individual participation in field construction (Carlow et al., 2016) . Following Bourdieu, the field is seen as a network of objective relationships between various locations that connect nature and society, which is also the basis for creating a space of free association (Hilgers & Mangez, 2015) . This field with strong social attributes is jointly constructed by various social actors entering the village in accordance with the requirements of specific socio-economic relations, and is a complex spatial network of social relationships determined by capital, power, and habits. The main venue where various stakeholders participate in leisure tourism activities is the most representative symbolic competition and personal strategy in rural areas. The purpose of this competition and strategy is to produce valuable symbolic goods, that is, the experience activities and experience values created by local production. Therefore, the field of rural space is a complex, multifaceted network that includes physical, social, cultural, and virtual space. Due to the different types and quantities of capital held by the interest subjects (or actors) in each field construction, their positions in the field are also different, and different positions also affect the control of capital, thereby affecting the intensity and level of field construction. People’s understanding of rural space has also undergone a transformation from a single physical space to a multidimensional, rural spatial system composed of “physical, social, and cultural arenas” (Hu, Li, Zhang, Chen, & Yuan, 2019) . The perfect space includes the physical, social, cultural and virtual fields. These fields constitute the basic units of creating value in the space, and bring to fruition mutual benefits, value sharing, value symbiosis and value sharing in the form of space mosaic (Echeverri, 2021) . The distribution mechanism of value co-creation drives the value co-benefits between various actors in different types of fields, promotes the transfer of functional value to experiential value in different types of fields, the transfer of information value to cultural value, and the direct transfer from functional value and experiential value to cultural value (Schwartz, 2009) . This not only makes the value factors located at the middle and upper levels of the field become the dominant factor in cultivating the sustainable vitality value of the field’s brand, but also promotes the transformation of implicit value into explicit value in the field, achieving the benefit distribution goal under the collaborative innovation paradigm.
3. Research Method
3.1. Research Site
From the perspective of the spatial structure of the village, the architectural space of Xiaozhou Village has become the spatial foundation for the construction of other fields. Xiaozhou Village retains buildings dating to the Ming dynasty, such as the Jian’s Grand Ancestral Hall, the Dongchi Ancestral Hall, the Xixi Jian Ancestral Hall, the Guangdong Mei Ancestral Hall, the Mu Nan Ancestral Hall, the Queen of Heaven Palace, and the Northern Emperor Temple. The ancestral hall buildings dating to the Qing dynasty include the Yingshan Jian Ancestral Hall, the Sihai Ancestral Hall, the Suiqiao Jian Ancestral Hall, the New Hall, and the Lushan Ancestral Hall. Ancient buildings with Lingnan characteristics, such as pot-ear eave houses, oyster shell houses, commercial streets and ancient alleys from the Qing Dynasty, and ancient boundary steles, are typical representatives of important historical and cultural areas in Guangzhou and Lingnan riverside villages. Xiaozhou Village has been listed as one of the first 16 historical and cultural conservation areas in Guangzhou and has been rated as an ecological demonstration village in Guangdong Province.
As visitors enter the village, they can see traditional houses on both sides of the streets and alleys, solemn and orderly ancestral halls, antique palaces and temples, clear rivers winding through one side of the block, and small bridges of various shapes spanning the streams. Xiaozhou village’s traditional agricultural fields are shrinking, and the influx of artists has led to the formation of artistic creative spaces, which have evolved into an industrial model based on cultural and creative industries and dominated by tourism.
Xiaozhou Village has gone through three stages of transformation: natural development, spontaneous gathering of artistic elites, and rural tourism and cultural creativity, forming production and living spaces, artistic and creative spaces, and creative commercial spaces corresponding to Lingnan Water Township. Xiaozhou Village has gradually transitioned from a production’s era dominated by agricultural production to a modern era of multifunctional agriculture. Through artistic intervention, entities such as the national and local governments, the capital, artists, and cultural groups have promoted typical models of rural revitalization with multi-level benefits, such as rural landscape reconstruction, comprehensive economic benefits, community construction and governance, and local cultural heritage in Xiaozhou villages to provide a solid foundation for the co-creation of rural space tourism and leisure value (Zhuang et al., 2022) (Figure 2).
3.2. Research Approaches
The goal of this study is to construct the field from sociological theory. On the basis of field investigation, the field type theoretical framework of rural value co-creation is proposed, and the value co-creation in different types of field construction in the framework is analyzed by using the analysis method of interaction between advantageous capital and other capital (Figure 3).
1) Value co-creation in physical fields.
Xiaozhou Village is a typical Lingnan riverside town, and the production and life activities related to the water system are the main forms of local value creation. Surrounded by waterways around the village, the web of roads radiates outward from the center, giving the Xiaozhou Village center a means of communication with the outside world. It not only meets the needs of villages for household water consumption, but also serves as an irrigation channel for rural agricultural production activities. This spatial structure of the water system strengthens the external connection between the social space and cultural space and forms a tight-knit and harmonious neighborhood relationship within the village. This specific layout of the water system also divides the village’s landscape into two parts: an old village and a new village. The old village refers to an area formed at the center of a small red sandstone hill with an altitude of only 10 meters, which is the traditional living space for local villagers. The streets and alleys of the old village are narrow and connected by pathways. The residents’ living spaces are closely connected, and there are few large courtyards. In addition, the land is surrounded by streams to the east of the West River, which makes it the best choice for establishing safe, flood-avoidant settlements. The evolution of the old village space demonstrates indications of historical sprawl, which means that the building clusters in the settlement extend radially towards the surrounding rivers, and the village has a typical comb-like structure when viewed from the air. From the perspective of historical development, Xiaozhou Village and its surrounding alluvial plains are the sources of the agricultural resources required for the economic and social development of the region. The climate, geography, society, economy, culture, and other factors are also more suitable for village life and agricultural production activities, thereby promoting the fruit growing with local particularities in the village, providing regionally-specific social and cultural activities (Xu & Genovese, 2022) . Traditional agriculture in Xiaozhou Village mainly focuses on planting fruits that are traditional to the Lingnan region.
The internal structure of Xiaozhou Village is inseparable from the combination of other spatial elements, such as agricultural production areas, which is also an important foundation for its various fields. In particular, the village settlement structure is indispensable for its physical field construction. One’s behavior is influenced by other people’s behavior and related factors, and behavior is also a carrier for interaction between tourists and local stakeholders to achieve value creation. The value creation of this space starts from the moment tourists
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Figure 3. The field types of value Co-creation in rural areas.
enter the village, which means that the contact between tourists and local people starts from this physical field and point of entry. Its remoteness and rural landscape create the uniqueness of physical spatial values, which is also the physical foundation for local communities and non-local tourists to jointly create value.
From a micro perspective, with the development of rural tourism, local villagers have gradually transformed their houses into residential accommodation, entertainment, shopping, restaurants, and other places, thereby beautifying their living spaces. The traditional living space has begun to undertake the task of receiving tourists, which has also promoted the reconstruction of a traditional living space. The traditional living space has gradually transformed into a comprehensive space that integrates life, production, and social activities. The development of Xiaozhou Village has also shifted from relying on land for a living to using land for profit, from the fusion of the “concept of emphasizing agriculture and protecting roots” to the “entrepreneurial spirit of industry and commerce.” This process of creating rural space value initially passively accepts the impact of economic radiation from the city to actively seek economic benefits and further promotes the innovative development of rural land and rural settlement landscapes in Xiaozhou Village (Liu, Kong, Tong, Zeng, & Lai, 2022) . Traditional agriculture has shifted from a single production function to a multifunctional integration of production, leisure, tourism, and education, and other rural areas are also showing a diversified development trend.
2) Value co-creation in social fields.
The social field comprises the interaction between tourists and local residents and has become a new mode of local social life and production, laying a solid social atmosphere for value co-creation. The value co-creation of social field is mainly reflected in the participation of local residents in the development of various local social affairs, and the harmonious development of society is reflected everywhere from production decision-making to community development. From the perspective of social affairs such as space protection, agricultural activities, and daily affairs, the management of villages has been internalized into relying on traditional village culture to constrain, that is, relying on local village rules and regulations to enhance the effectiveness of management, so that all village affairs are also culture- and heritage-oriented. As most social affairs are accomplished via democratic decision-making by local villagers, village rules and regulations continue to become the code of conduct for local residents, enabling people to internalize the rules into their own spiritual core and conscious identity, thereby giving full play to the role of village rules and regulations. Based on the practice and construction of social space, community residents have played a positive role in the formation of a local, unique cultural space. The existing forms of rural social space and the active performance of folk culture have become important foundations for the influence of rural areas (Pesce, Neirotti, & Paolucci, 2019) . Therefore, folk cultural heritage is not only an important component of social space, but also involves many local stakeholders (actors) and is part of a broader range of social ecosystems.
In the new media era, various social media outlets such as microblogs, WeChat and TikTok serve as platforms for recording and transmitting information, making the traditional buildings and cultural heritage of villages new spaces for different forms of livelihoods. Village space has gradually evolved from simple agricultural production and living spaces in the past, to a multi-functional experience space that integrates value elements such as residence, leisure, tourism, entertainment, modern services, and scale production. In the construction of visitor centers, folk exhibition halls, shopping malls, restaurants, and other spaces, the main actors pay close attention to rural cultural characteristics, regional context, folk customs, giving full play to rural tourism, leisure, cultural experiences, vacation and other brand effects, and lay a spatial foundation for the community brand building of Xiaozhou Village. By establishing communication, division of labor, and collaboration networks with the government, businesses, the public, and society, the level of value co-creation in various fields can be improved. This not only enables village residents to continue their social exchanges and cultural traditions, but it also allows tourists to feel the uniqueness of local residents’ life interests and ethnic customs.
According to sociological theory, the capital that drives field construction is a kind of accumulated labor. Only when actors have certain ownership or management rights in rural space, can they utilize the social energy that has been materialized or embodied as living labor, thereby promoting the transformation of field types in rural space. With the adjustment and differentiation of rural social relations, its space is further subdivided into more types of small social groups. These small social groups not only have their own survival logic and the inevitability of development in rural society, but they also engage in value creation with stakeholders, construct their own unique social space, continue their specific cultural traditions of production and life, and ultimately embed them in the spatial environment of the entire village.
3) Value co-creation in cultural fields.
Among the numerous local cultural space experiences, the homestay experience has become the most personalized experience, transforming tourists’ interest in a local space into people’s special interest in local life, thereby enabling tourists to experience activities to live like local people and create value together with local people in this cultural space (Marques & Gondim Matos, 2020) . The resulting social relationships have evolved from “face-to-face” to “local-to-local” and then to “people-oriented” and “contact and relationships”. Compared with other architectural styles in the surrounding areas, the local architecture of Xiaozhou Village is typical of Guangfu architectural style dwellings, which have a neat comb style layout of villages and a courtyard style of three rooms and two corridors. The village architecture fully reflects the Guangfu architectural in terms of house orientation, village layout, and decoration in front of the village. It is a relatively stable architectural and cultural space that is inseparable from the lifestyle and production methods of local people. The spatial distribution and texture of its streets and alleys have a strong characteristic of riverside dwellings in the Lingnan region and continue the common spatial characteristics of “comb structure” in the architectural style of Guangfu. The streets and alleys here are also paved with natural stones, and the narrow streets and alleys can only be seen in the sun at certain times of the day. The houses built with oyster shells in the village have become an important feature of ancient buildings in the village. The initial builders of these houses dug oyster shells from the coast and mixed them with yellow mud, making this often discarded oyster shell a high-quality local building material. This type of house is warm in the winter and is cool in the summer, and is resistant to insects and rain, making it suitable for the climate of Lingnan region.
In addition to the tangible cultural heritage of Xiaozhou Village, intangible cultural heritage also plays a key role in value creation. Whenever significant traditional festivals are held in villages, tourists can also participate in local traditional festivals, ancestral temple ceremonies, ethnic wedding customs, and folk performance activities as if they were local people. The high-quality homestays that serve tourists, from their architectural location, spatial layout, house orientation, internal structure, to peoples’ lifestyles and production methods, all reflect the local people’s respect and care towards nature and their wisdom in how to coexist with the natural environment. Near the Xiaozhou Village auditorium, specialty snack shops such as Guwu sesame paste and Xiaozhou wedding cake have become important culinary attractions for locals and outsiders. The local homestays have transformed the daily lives of villagers into the experiential value of tourists, local villagers transform their houses into homestays and rent them out to tourists. Through this process of spatial cultural transformation, the transformation of traditional livelihood methods through the process of cultural change, and local people have also gained the diversified value of cultural change and transformation.
In recent years, with more and more artists settling in Xiaozhou Village, a rich artistic atmosphere has been created for the village, and its development has begun to shift towards an artistic and cultural village, becoming a typical example of how art affects rural revitalization and development. Due to the influence of various cultural factors in different periods, the diverse cultural spatial characteristics have provided a solid cultural foundation for the construction of the cultural field in Xiaozhou Village, making it a base for research and travel. With rich historical and material culture and a strong artistic creation environment, Xiaozhou Village has gradually developed into a famous art gathering place in Guangzhou. Many painters rent villager houses as exhibition halls or studios, and foreign artists and teachers and students from art colleges often come here to take photos, live sketch, and seek inspiration. In addition, these artistic activities have attracted more art lovers to start their own artistic creations, and Xiaozhou Village has gradually become a paradise for artists. Some tourism operators focus on local cultural heritage, emphasizing the advantages of cultural elements for village culture, coordinating the relationships of stakeholders, and achieving the goal of maximizing value creation. Through experience design, experience development, experience marketing, and experience services, a series of diversified research and learning travel activities have been developed. The village has shaped spatial brands such as traditional homestays, folk customs, specialty catering, and educational travel.
The combination of multiple subjects in the field of rural culture is rich, including not only government departments but also social and non-governmental organizations, as well as rural community subjects, a broad cultural audience, descendant community stakeholders, and investors under industrial operation. In the village, cultural spaces such as the Scholar’s Style Research Room, the Family Culture Research Room, the Ancient City Academy Research Room, and the Cultural Celebrity Research Room have been set up, providing a rich cultural arena for facilitating research.
3.3. The Intensity of Value Co-Creation in the Field
Value co-creation in rural fields mainly depends on the passivity and initiative of tourists and related enterprises as well as the level of field complexity. According to participation activity and initiative, the field of value co-creation can be divided into the following four types (Figure 4).
1) Conservative field. This type of field that can engage in low participation and passive experiences has a low level of field construction, and users play the role of bystanders in the field. They only need to observe and experience the content in the field without any interaction or decision-making.
2) Participatory field. This type of field with strong participation and proactive experience has a middle level of field construction: tourists play the role of participants in the field, requiring some simple interaction and decision-making, but the dominant power of the field still lies in the hands of local enterprises and other stakeholders.
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Figure 4. The theoretical framework of value Co-creation in rural fields.
3) Active field. This highly participatory and proactive experience field has a high level of field construction: tourists play the leading role in the field, requiring complex interactions and decision-making. The development and outcome of the field depend not only on tourists’ behavior and choices, but also on the participation of businesses.
4) Passive field. In a passive field, passive participants usually do not actively participate in the experience, but rather, they accept it. This kind of field presents difficulty in autonomous participation: tourists play a passive role in the scene, and their enthusiasm for freely experiencing is constrained by the strong atmosphere of the field.
4. The Path of Rural Field Construction
4.1. Digital Intelligence of Field
Applying digital and intelligent technologies to promote the digital transformation of rural industries and spatial production can help establish various types of immersive fields, thereby improving the intelligent, digital, contemporary protection and development level of rural cultural heritage. Through the construction of a field, the limitations of rural spatial scope are broken, thereby forming a new leisure tourism product and consumption model. By adopting metacosmic technology, for example, VR and AI technologies, to upgrade and transform traditional villages, while maintaining the cultural context and heritage style of traditional villages, we will continuously expand the spatial context for tourists with the theme of field narration. At that moment, tourists will enter the virtual village enclosed space and disappearing space in the form of digital avatars and interact with various actors in this virtual field to achieve value creation. In this context, “disappearing space” can be thought of as the phenomenon where past historical events or concepts gradually disappear from modern people’s perception and understanding. In the mixed space of reality and the metauniverse, by integrating a novel cultural creativity, fields in the form of themed homestays, bazaars, farms, and festivals are created that provide participants with a comprehensive roleplaying experience from visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile aspects, which serve to enhance their perception when reaching the peak of experience. During the virtual on-site experience, local products, specialty cuisine, and tourist souvenirs are displayed and sold in creative ways, adding rich and authentic “props” to the on-site scenery and increasing the profit points of on-site services. In the process of field visualization, it is necessary to promote the effective integration of spiritual middle-level culture and core philosophy culture into the process of value co-creation through the visual form of abstraction, imitation, humanization and localization. For example, creative elements such as sound, light, electricity, flowers, and vegetation could be utilized to create a field of interaction, sharing, and cultural themes between hosts and guests, connecting reality, enhancing effective connections between rural tourism scene nodes, promoting the implantation of local symbols into cultural fields, and showcasing the commercialization of cultural activities in innovative forms.
4.2. Synthesis of Field
It is necessary to seek a joint point of value creation from the perspectives of field co-construction, co-governance, and sharing in order to promote the spatial value co-creation of ecological co-governance, cultural co-formation, industrial co-prosperity, and facility sharing. To construct physical, social, and cultural fields in traditional villages is to continuously improve the level of value creation in the spatial field of the village. Those spatial clues that carry historic memory, such as rural streets, buildings, and ancestral halls, constitute the physical field of rural memory and become the natural basis for tourists’ leisure experience. The cultural heritage such as dramas, folk customs, books, legends, allusions, and festivals presents the local memory space in the form of words, gestures, and other expressions, and thus becomes the context of the cultural field that displays rural memories. Some virtual fields derived from physical space express the inheritance of explicit and invisible culture through spatial representation, which not only helps to elevate the immersive experience of tourists to a new level, but also enhances the expressiveness of the village space in cultural memory, and also increases the level of value creation among various actors. Through the construction of a series of fields, the relatively closed local space of the traditional village has been transformed into a more open mobile space, improving the sustainable livelihood ability of rural residents. By attracting more tourists to participate through immersive experience projects, the countryside can be built into a “rural complex” integrating cuisine, accommodation, leisure and entertainment, agricultural product production, processing, and sales in a way of value creation.
4.3. Ecologization of Field
The ecological allocation of rural space and the ecological transformation of public fields can better optimize the ecological environment of rural farmhouses, homestays, and ordinary residential courtyards. Rural space is often intertwined with living space and production space, or, for example, a rural courtyard is not only living space but also production space, which belongs to semi-open space or private space but is also the main form of ecological field construction. The rural courtyard provides space for residents to engage in leisure and gathering activities, and also allows for gardening or crop production, supporting the maintenance of daily necessities such as vegetables, herbs, and fruits, which further improve the sustainability of villagers’ livelihoods. From the perspective of sustainable livelihoods, it is necessary to fully leverage the traditional advantages of village rules and regulations in rural ecological governance, to be able to continuously draw on the ecological wisdom of local residents and enhance the support of the ecological environment for value creation. Attracting makers or creatives into the countryside through the construction of a maker space, further strengthens the network ties of interpersonal communication within the village, and cultivates the value concept of ecological co-governance with tourists. In turn, the locals benefit from a revalorization of their knowledge through increased protection of the environment, improvement of agricultural production efficiency, enhancement of rural sustainable development capacity, increase in human health, and the promotion of social harmony and stability. We should participate in ecological construction through social capital, amplify the spatial effects of characteristic ecological zones, rural cultural squares, and characteristic activities, and enhance the comprehensive awareness of rural residents in ecological governance.
5. Results and Conclusion
5.1. Discussion
A rural space with strong experiential attributes is a network composed of different local social relationships. This network includes elements such as props, actors, and the background of the local storyline. It is not only a place for the transformation of knowledge and skills, but also a “trading” place for achieving innovative value and has become a catalyst for promoting innovation in rural spatial production.
The difference between the field based on sociological field theory and the spatial environment emphasized by tourists in the experience process is that this field emphasizes the social attribute of space. The perceived space during the experience can enable tourists to feel a certain local social relationship within it. However, this process is passive on the part of the tourists and does not emphasize mutual value co-creation.
The field based on sociological theory cannot generally be understood as a field surrounded by certain boundary objects, but rather the existence of various elements and social relationships that contain power, vitality, and potential.
Field construction needs to overcome the limitations of single scene construction, establish broader links with other fields, expand the rural value chain, and enhance the value creation ability of rural space. The use of high-tech artificial intelligence as a means greatly enhances the comprehensive perception of experience scene, adding new development to the construction of a rural virtual world.
5.2. Results
The capacity for value co-creation varies among different types of fields, depending on the level of field construction and the initiative and passivity of the participants. The types of field construction in Xiaozhou Village are relatively complete, including the physical, social, and cultural fields. The level of investment for attracting tourists to participate in value co-creation varies for each type of field, and the driving force for spatial production is also inconsistent. The co-creation potential for Xiaozhou Village, in terms of domain value, is higher in the physical field than in the cultural field, and higher in the cultural field than in the social field, which leads to an imbalance between the spatial experience value of tourists and the local livelihood.
The entrepreneurial groups who rent houses from outside the village have established various connections with local residents, improved the construction level of various fields, and promoted the co-creation process of local economic, social, cultural, and emotional values. Entrepreneurs who reside in the village not only promote the diversification of field development, but also promote the value co-creation process of interaction with tourists, forming a diversified spatial form of structural optimization, carrying capacity transformation, and value co-creation.
The diversity of spatial production and sustainable livelihoods in the Xiaozhou Village communities has also led to a decrease in the population of indigenous villagers and a continuous increase in the number of outsiders. At present, the village is mainly composed of elderly people and children, with the majority of adults leaving the village to work. The portion of the population that is mainly focused on art and creativity is more integrated, resulting in a differentiation between the diverse business activities carried out by the migrant population and the local, indigenous villagers going out to work. Among the migrant population, artistic and creative groups have become involved in the development of Xiaozhou Village, and the construction of various creative spaces has become a new driving force for its development. Xiaozhou Village has gradually developed into a leisure tourism destination and cultural and creative industry base similar to the bustling city and Taohuayuan style, which is an ideal society that is peaceful, self-sufficient, harmonious, friendly, and free from pollution and disputes.
5.3. Conclusion
In this study, we found that four types of fields are closely related to capital types and their powers. The amount and type of specific capital in the field determine the position occupied by various actors and the sum of power obtained. The most powerful capital in the physical field is visible elements, such as land and ancient buildings in villages. Capital in the social field has gradually shifted from existing clan-based community relationships to emerging capital formed by the interaction between local residents and external entrepreneurs and tourists, effectively shifting the main axis of power within the social field. With the entry of various external cultures and ethnic groups, the cultural field of villages has undergone convergent changes, and the original kinship-based culture has begun to be overcome by new, nonlocal types of culture. Although local communities strive to maintain their original architectural culture, living customs, neighborhood relationships, and other traditional forms, a new type of cultural field mixed with external, nonlocal culture is taking shape and, in turn, is also shaping a new type of cultural field. Xiaozhou Village locals maintain a deep connection to their environment and community, and as such, aim to uphold the traditions they inherited from their ancestors while still participating in a more global economy. The formation of a new cultural field is forming a new community, and its local community that combines regional culture and modern culture is being shaped into a brand or trademark community. This process is also changing the development trends of the village. The construction of different fields has changed the original mode of production in rural areas and has also led to a shift from the spatial pattern of productivism focusing on material production to the new productivism focusing on human development. The diversification of field construction has also promoted the diversification of local livelihoods, which has become the key to the high-quality development of the local community’s economy. In the process of field construction based on sociological theory, it is necessary to follow the construction path of the type of value creation activities in the design field-integrating the development form of multi-functional agriculture-constructing a field with multi-dimensional connotation-promoting the sharing of stakeholders.
Firstly, it is necessary to expand the scope of value co-creation in rural physical, social, cultural, and virtual fields through the types of activities in the process of constructing social fields. It is necessary to extend the rural historical and cultural development chains into the multi-functional agricultural value chain and continuously enhance the adaptability of a village’s cultural heritage to value creation with the aim of improving the livelihoods of local residents. Through the development of natural ecological and cultural spaces, opportunities are provided for participants in educational travel to participate in rural development, continuously enriching the content of educational travel activities and creating brand value for them.
Secondly, there should be a push to create a group of digital and intelligent immersive fields, to achieve the goal of building a new community brand centered on field construction. Adopting technology that allows users to experience a highly immersive experience to create unforgettable fields allows users to more realistically experience the scene they are in. The field of value co creation and construction will become the driving force for the development of local communities, enabling local social resources to help improve the livelihood level of community members and achieve the goal of sharing brand community resources.
Thirdly, innovative rural business models that rely on external capital have shifted from focusing on tangible resource development to focusing on the protection and creative display of local intangible cultural heritage, such as rural folk culture tourism. In this process, it is necessary to coordinate the participation and benefit acquisition methods of various stakeholders, identify and allocate spatial resources such as management, marketing, and maintenance for the creation of innovation fields, and improve the transformation level of village spatial value co-creation.
Finally, this work should actively aim to explore new ways for governments, schools, businesses, and social welfare organizations to cultivate and utilize talents. The overall goal should be to build spatial value network that integrates rural landscapes, industries, society, ecology, and culture, in order to improve the coverage of digital and intelligent construction in rural areas and enhance the endogenous motivation for residents to participate in value co-creation.
Acknowledgements
This project is funded by Guangzhou Vocational University of Science and Technology (GKD202205)