The evolution of tourist destinations is an important proposition and practical hotspot of tourism geography research. Taking Huangshan City as an example, this paper explores the mechanism of tourism destination evolution in Huangshan City from the perspective of evolutionary economic geography, combining the path-dependence and path-creation effects, and using logistic model and multiple linear regression model. It is found that: (1) the tourism destinations evolution in Huangshan City has experienced four stages: path introduction, path transformation, path promotion and path innovation. (2) Its evolution process presents the characteristics from externally driven to internally driven, point agglomeration to network agglomeration, and from single to composite. (3) The evolution stage is generally influenced by the positive influence of multiple factors such as resource endowment, policy environment, capital conditions, and consumer demand, and the degree of effect varies at different stages. (4) Under the iterative cycle of path dependence and path creation, the tourism destinations in Huangshan City has formed a non-linear and complex adaptive system evolution mechanism through the dynamic adjustment of the relationship between the government and the market, the complex changes in the macro-context, and the synergistic effect of multiple subjects. The theoretical and practical research of this paper can provide some theoretical reference and decision-making reference for the transformation and development of tourism destinations.

In recent years,the imbalance in the regional distribution of tourist flowscaused byover-tourism at tourist attractions has becomeincreasingly worsened. This paper, based on a multi-agent approach, simulates tourist path choices and spatial movements under scenarios with and without social media intervention, and constructs amicrosimulation system for urban tourism flow (TFS) using Chongqing urban district as an example. It explores how social media intervention shapes the distribution of urban tourism flow and its impacton the polarization of tourist areas. The results show that: (1) under the scenario with social media intervention, tourists are more likely to rapidly converge in specific hotspot areas, leading to a polarization trend. (2) The fundamental reason is that social media accelerates the convergence of tourists' perceptions of “must-visit attractions”, resulting in a surge in visitors at popular sites and a sharp decline in the number of tourists at other locations. (3) This polarization is primarily driven by the personalized recommendations and viral effects of social media. The study not only demonstrates the profound influence of social media on tourist decision-making and spatial behavior, but also provides important insights and practical implications for predicting, intervening in, and optimizing the management strategies of regionaltourism flow.

The conventional path of promoting regional cooperation as a leading strategy often fails to meet the developmental needs of cross-border tourist destinations. This study explores the characteristics and development paths of cross-border tourist destinations by examining their developmental and governance background. Based on the theory of path dependence, an evolutionary model is constructed to analyze the risks of development path’s rigidity. Using an empirical analysis of the development models and governance systems of the Maoshan Scenic Area, the study summarizes its evolutionary characteristics and proposes optimization strategies. The findings reveal: (1) the development paths of cross-border tourist destinations are driven by multiple factors, including resource endowments, key events at critical moments, and regional governance models. These destinations exhibit significant path dependence due to limited resource integration, fragmented governance models, and administrative boundary divisions. (2) The evolution of development paths demonstrates clear heterogeneity, shaped jointly by initial conditions and key events at critical moments. While some cross-border tourist destinations achieve positive path locking through resource optimization and governance innovation, others fall into negative path locking due to insufficient resource integration and poor interregional coordination. (3) In terms of evolutionary mechanisms, initial conditions, such as tourism resource endowments, reinforce path dependence through increasing returns to scale, laying the foundation for development. Meanwhile, random events act as external disturbances to promote path adjustments and transformations. Based on these findings, the study proposes three optimization strategies: strengthening top-level design, exploring differentiated development paths, and establishing innovative coordination and management systems. These strategies aim to mitigate homogeneous competition among cross-border tourist destinations and achieve unified planning and benefit-sharing as core objectives.

In the protection and utilization of dietary cultural resources, the implementation of new-era environmental policies is highly prone to conflict with resource perceptions, ownership concepts, and cultural habits inherent in local knowledge systems, potentially triggering collective incidents. This study examines the case of the prohibition of private curing of preserved meat in the urban area of T County, Sichuan Province. Using an expanded policy implementation interaction model and the grounded theory method, it explores the interaction processes among key stakeholders—such as the public, government, and media—during the execution of environmental policies. The findings reveal that: (1) divergence in stakeholders' interest demands is the primary cause of policy implementation blockages, the government seeks to achieve dual objectives through implementing environmental policies: fulfilling administrative tasks and safeguarding public interests, while the public primarily focuses on protecting personal economic benefits, avoiding time and energy costs, mitigating risks of cultural heritage disruption, and addressing governmental administrative errors, and the media acts as an intermediary factor, continuously mediating the relationship between the two parties. (2) Stakeholder interactions manifest two types of ralations, i.e., adversarial and collaborative relations, when governmental errors escalate social conflicts, these tensions negatively impact administrative operations, institutional credibility, cultural preservation, and resource governance, yet after the apologies, tripartite cooperation emerges through accountability realignment, enabling timely containment of public interest losses. (3) Solutions to policy implementation obstruction and mass incidents include theoretical adjustment mechanism and realistic development path, which cover two dimensions of government governance and coordination and public participation and coordination; the former includes the establishment of structural contradiction resolution pathways, two-way information communication mode and policy evaluation mechanism, while the latter includes cultural inheritance and tourism utilization path. This study expands the interaction model, deepens the theoretical basis for the protection and utilization of traditional food culture resources,, and also puts forward systematic suggestions for the government to resolve collective incidents, introduce environmental pollution control policies, and protect and utilize traditional cultural resources.

Forest tourism is an important path to to promote the transformation of regional “green mountains” into “golden mountains”. Based on panel data from 60 key cities in China from 2009 to 2022, the approval of Fuzhou as a national forest tourism demonstration city is designed as a quasi-natural experiment to promote regional forest tourism development, and adopts the synthetic control method and the mediation effect test model to explore the profound impact of forest tourism development on the transformation of regional “green mountains” into “golden mountains”. Research has found that: (1) the construction of a national forest tourism demonstration city in Fuzhou can significantly increase the region’s gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita GDP, indicating that the development of forest tourism can transform the region’s “green mountains” into “invaluable assets”. (2) The effect of forest tourism policy has a one-year policy expectation for promoting the regional transformation of the “two mountains”, and this effect strengthens year by year. (3) Empirical tests have found that forest tourism can promote regional economic growth by the multiplier effect of employment income, upgrading effect of industrial structure, supply chain effect of green tourism and value release effect of ecological service, thereby assisting in the transformation of the regional “green mountains” into “golden mountains”. Accordingly, the article proposes management countermeasures to enhance the impact of forest tourism policies on the regional “two mountains” transformation effect, such as leveraging the leading role of demonstration areas, promoting employment and income generation for residents, facilitating industrial structure upgrading, improving the green tourism supply chain, and driving the release of ecological value.

As a significant demographic group engaged in social media sharing, women have garnered considerable research attention. However, there has been limited exploration into whether and what differences exist in the influencing mechanisms of women's willingness and behavior to share online at different stages of their family life cycle. This study integrates the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Social Exchange Theory (SET) to develop a research model, uses structural equation modeling (SEM) and multi-group analysis (MGA) to test the model using a sample of 628 participants, and further compares the model differences among three groups, namely, single (empty nest stage), married without children (nesting stage), and married with children (full nest stage). The findings reveal that: (1) in terms of non-functional factors, single women value perceived interaction, women that married without children emphasize perceived enjoyment and interaction, while perceived flaunt appeal significantly influences the sharing willingness and behaviors across all groups. (2) Regarding functional factors, single women and women that married without childernfocus on perceived ease of use, while married women with children prioritize perceived usefulness. (3) Online sharing willingness positively influences both sharing behaviors and tourism decision-making in all three groups. This paper contributes to the literature on women’s online sharing behavior, expands the application of family life cycle theory in tourism studies, and provides theoretical insights and empirical support for targeted marketing strategies and personalized services for tourism enterprises and social media platforms.