Tourism and conserving intangible cultural heritage: Residents’ perspectives on protecting the nüshu female script

Combining intangible cultural heritage (ICH) with tourism is one way of protecting living culture, and community residents have long been the most important stakeholders in these efforts. This paper explores the relationship between residents’ role in heritage conservation and heritage tourism and determines a means of protecting ICH by introducing a Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model and data from a survey and field interviews in Jiangyong, China. The results show that inhabitants’ behavioral attitudes, subjective norms and perceptual behavior control for conserving Nüshu (an ancient and unique women’s written language) have a significant impact on intentions to protect this ICH. The external pressure of subjective norms is more important than any other factor. The sustainable development of tourism and the protection of ICH are complementary, and community involvement is critical for sustaining ICH and developing heritage tourism. Finally, the study highlights several managerial implications.