Abstract: Development of rural tourism provides an approach to solving the problems with agriculture, farmers and rural areas. Implementation of the standards for the rural tourism quality rating system helps promote the transformation of the traditional rural areas and agriculture resources into collective farms and industrial operations, and helps ensure a sustainable rural tourism development. In this paper, in the context of regional cooperation, we compared the evaluation categories of rural tourism quality standards among the four provinces on the west coast of Taiwan Strait, and found that creation and evaluation of rural tourism quality standards are different in different areas, which hinders the integrated development of the rural tourism industry. It is important to establish the criteria for the tourism products of the same level and quality based on demands and feedback of tourists. The framework of the evaluation system should contain three major components: mechanisms of allocation and cooperation of the functions of stakeholders, examination of the comparable indices of tourism quality, and assessment of the core values of tourism products, in order to further specify and improve the rural tourism quality standards, and to promote the integrated development of star region of rural tourism on the west coast of Taiwan strait. As a typical case, this study serves as a guide for a standardized rural tourism development.

Key words: quality standard, regional cooperation, rural tourism, tourist zone on the west coast of Taiwan Strait