Cross-Sectional Survey Protocol for Assessing Protection Intention and Self-Reported Behavior in Agricultural Heritage Tourism in Xiajin, China

Summary

This protocol describes a reproducible cross-sectional survey workflow for assessing protection intention and recent self-reported protective behavior among residents and farmers in an agricultural heritage tourism system.

Abstract

Agricultural heritage tourism sustainability depends not only on ecological and cultural preservation, but also on the continued participation of local residents in protection-related practices. This protocol describes a reproducible cross-sectional survey and statistical analysis workflow for assessing protection intention and recent self-reported protective behavior among residents and farmers in the Xiajin Yellow River Old Course Ancient Mulberry Grove System in China. The workflow is grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior and examines how attitude toward the behavior (ATB), subjective norms (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC) are associated with protection intention (PI), and how PI is associated with farmers’ behavioral response (FBR). The questionnaire uses standardized construct blocks, fixed response anchors, predefined coding rules, and a sequential analysis procedure covering data screening, reliability testing, common method variance assessment, correlation analysis, regression modeling, cross-sectional mediation analysis, and robustness checks. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed in communities surrounding the heritage area, and 375 valid responses were retained after quality-control screening. In the representative application of this protocol, ATB, SN, and PBC were positively associated with PI, with PBC showing the strongest association. PI was also positively associated with FBR and showed statistically significant indirect associations between the antecedent constructs and FBR within the cross-sectional mediation model. Because PI refers to intention for the next planting season whereas FBR refers to self-reported behavior during the previous planting season, the results should be interpreted as a cross-sectional association structure rather than as evidence of strict temporal causality. This protocol provides a reusable framework for examining resident participation in agricultural heritage protection and for identifying whether protective behaviors are embedded in feasible agricultural, community, and tourism-related practices.

Introduction

The Xiajin Yellow River Old Course Ancient Mulberry Grove System is not simply a heritage attraction for display. It is a living agricultural landscape in which ecological regulation, traditional cultivation, and local livelihoods remain closely intertwined. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization description of the site, the system developed on the sandy land left by the ancient Yellow River course, where mulberry-based agroforestry has long been used to control sand movement, improve site conditions, and support continued agricultural production¹. In this sense, the continuity of the system depends not only on formal recognition or....

Protocol

This study involved an anonymous, minimal-risk paper-based questionnaire survey among adult residents in China. No names, identity numbers, telephone numbers, addresses, biological samples, clinical information, or other directly identifiable personal information were collected. According to the institutional policy issued by the University Ethics Committee for Research Involving Human Subjects (JKEUPM), Universiti Putra Malaysia, research involving anonymous human-subject surveys conducted entirely outside UPM/Malaysia did not require formal JKEUPM ethics approval under the policy effective from September 01, 2023.

Participation was volunt....

Results

Data entry and quality control

A total of 375 matched questionnaires were retained across the five questionnaire-based data groupings. During item-level range checking, three out-of-range entries coded as “45” were identified in one PBC item. These values were treated as manual data-entry errors because they fell outside the allowable 1-5 response range for Likert-scale items. The three values were recoded as item-level missing values before construct averaging. Because each a.......

Discussion

The present study applied a reproducible cross-sectional survey protocol to examine how attitude toward the behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control were associated with protection intention, and how protection intention was associated with farmers’ self-reported behavioral response in the Xiajin agricultural heritage tourism context. The results showed a consistent pattern. All three antecedent constructs were positively associated with protection intention, and protection intention was positiv.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Ballpoint pens	Local stationery supplier	Not applicable	Used by respondents to complete paper questionnaires during village-based data collection and onsite survey administration.
IBM SPSS Statistics, Version 30.0	IBM Corporation	SPSS Statistics 30.0	Used for descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, common method variance testing, correlation analysis, linear regression, mediation analysis, HC3 robustness analysis, and Poisson regression robustness analysis.
Locked storage cabinet	Local office equipment supplier	Not applicable	Used to store completed paper questionnaires securely before and after data entry.
Microsoft Excel	Microsoft Corporation	CFQ7TTC0PBMF	Used for raw-data organization, worksheet matching, item-level range checking, duplicate screening, preliminary coding, and recomputation of construct scores before formal statistical analysis.
Participant information and consent sheet	Self-prepared by the research team	Not applicable	Provided at the beginning of the questionnaire. Respondents confirmed voluntary participation through a tick-box consent item before answering the survey.
Password-protected data-analysis workstation	Self-managed research workstation	Not applicable	Used to store de-identified electronic datasets and conduct statistical analysis.
Printed questionnaire forms	Self-prepared by the research team	Not applicable	Used for offline paper-based questionnaire administration in the 14 villages within the Xiajin Yellow River Old Course Ancient Mulberry Grove System.
PROCESS macro for SPSS, Version 4.2	Andrew F. Hayes	PROCESS v4.2	Used for bootstrap mediation analysis and heteroskedasticity-consistent HC3 standard-error estimation.
Respondent serial-number labels	Self-prepared by the research team	Not applicable	Used to assign each questionnaire a unique respondent serial number for matching the five questionnaire groupings during data entry and screening.