Tourist satisfaction is a crucial prerequisite for the sustainable development of tourism destinations. Exploring the relationship between cultural distance and tourist satisfaction at over-tourism destinations can provide valuable insights for sustainable management. Drawing on cultural distance theory and place attachment theory, this study takes Dunhuang as a case and collected 287 valid tourist questionnaires. Using structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression analysis, the study examines the mechanisms linking tourists’ perceived cultural distance, place attachment, travel expectations, and satisfaction at over-tourism destinations. The findings indicate that: (1) tourists’ perceived cultural distance positively influences both place attachment and satisfaction significantly. (2) Place attachment mediates the relationship between perceived cultural distance and tourist satisfaction. (3) Travel expectations positively moderate the relationship between perceived cultural distance and place attachment. The study contributes theoretically by clarifying the pathways through which cultural distance affects satisfaction at over-tourism destinations and offers practical recommendations for enhancing place attachment, meeting tourist expectations, and managing visitor flows, thereby offering policy recommendations for sustainable tourism development in China’s over-tourism destinations.

The differentiation of technical rules on social media platforms has reconstructed the narrative power structure of tourist destinations, undermined the authoritative status of traditional official narratives, and formed a pattern of coexistence, interaction, and dynamic interplay between official narratives and diverse user-generated narratives on the platforms, thus giving rise to a new phenomenon of destination image conflict. Taking Hongyadong in Chongqing as a case study and employing grounded theory methodology, this study examines platform-native content data from three major platforms: WeChat, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu, aiming to explore the evolutionary mechanism of tourist destination image conflict across differentiated social media platforms. The findings reveal that: (1) the differentiation of platforms’ technical rules reconstructs the narrative power structure, triggering significant conflicts between the official narratives of destinations and user-generated narratives on the platforms in terms of narrative objectives, forms, and functions. (2) Driven by the traffic logic, a disjuncture emerges between the external forms and internal meanings of destination cultural symbols, leading to the “symbol dilution” that gradually strips away of their deep cultural connotations. (3) Amplified by algorithmic recommendations, the disordered symbolic system ultimately results in “cognitive fragmentation” among tourists. This study innovatively constructs the “Platform-driven image conflict evolution model” (P-S-C Model), which systematically unveils the generative mechanism and evolutionary path of the vulnerability of tourist destination images in the digital context. It provides a novel analytical framework for understanding cross-platform image conflicts and advances destination image governance from unilateral control to adaptive collaboration.

With the deep integration of digital technology and ancient town tourism, tourist experience has taken on a new form blending the “virtual” and the “real”. This study integrates embodied cognition theory, social identity theory, and the theory of planned behaviour. Employing a mixed-methods approach combining questionnaire surveys with fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), it investigates how the prosocial behaviour of ancient town visitors is influenced by digital tourism experiences, authenticity experiences, and their interaction. It further reveals the chained mediation and configurational pathway mechanisms. Findings indicate: (1) both digital tourism experiences and authenticity experiences positively influence prosocial behaviour among ancient town visitors, with authenticity exerting a greater impact than digital experiences. (2) Digital tourism experiences and authenticity experiences generate a mutually reinforcing positive interaction, collectively enhancing visitors' prosocial behaviour. (3) The aforementioned interactions influence visitors’ prosocial behaviour through chained mediating pathways involving place identity and self-efficacy. (4) The driving mechanisms of visitors’ prosocial behaviour comprise three configurational pathways: “dual experience-place identity”, “digital tourism experience-place identity-self-efficacy synergy”, and “authenticity experience-place identity-self-efficacy synergy”. This study transcends singular experiential perspectives to reveal the interactive effects of dual virtual-real experiences on tourists’ emotions, cognition, and behaviour, alongside their mediating mechanisms. Employing mixed-methods research to identify multi-configurational driving pathways, it provides theoretical underpinnings and practical insights for the digital development of ancient towns, authenticity preservation, and the guidance of tourist prosocial behaviour.

Overtourism has emerged as a critical challenge constraining the sustainable transformation of destinations as China’s tourism industry moves towards a stage of high-quality development. Situated in the real-world context of consumption transformation and the digital wave, this paper systematically analyzes the localized characteristics of Chinese-style overtourism and its coping strategies from the dimensions of generative mechanism, spatial alienation, and governance transformation. The research indicates: (1) the alienation of consumption patterns from “demand-driven” to “symbol-driven” amplified by capital and media, has intensified the effect of spatial homogenization. There is an urgent need to guide the return of value rationality and implement multi-stakeholder co-governance. (2) New media algorithms have reshaped tourist destinations into rapidly communicable digital landscapes, triggering pulse-type visitor-flow aggregation and social spatial alienation. The focus of governance must shift from static capacity control to resilient governance oriented towards flow management and platform collaboration. (3) Overtourism in natural protected areas manifests as the breach of the ecological fragility threshold. Capacity limit must serve as hard constraints and with smart monitoring and ecological education safeguarding natural environments. (4) Ancient towns and villages face an authenticity crisis as they transform from a living space to a symbolic stage. It is essential to rebuild the cultural tourism model based on the community and preserve the authenticity through shared daily experiences between locals and visitors. (5) Urban overtourism is essentially a social-ecological system imbalance embedded in policy, technology, and consumption. To achieve high-quality development, a localized explanatory framework should be constructed, promoting a dynamic shift in the governance paradigm from “capacity calculation” to “flow management”, establishing a differentiated comprehensive governance system that is predictable and controllable.

Crowding is a perennial topic in tourism research, particularly salient in highly frequented tourist attractions such as theme parks. Visitor volume serves as a double-edged sword, acting both as a key indicator of a destination's appeal and a core component of its recreational atmosphere. Based on big data of online texts and small data of on-site questionnaires, this study explores whether and in what ways the perceived crowding and its effects (i.e. emotional and behavioral responses) may differ for tourists having varied experiences. The findings are as follows: (1) sentiment analyses of online reviews of Chimelong Ocean Kingdom and Shanghai Disney Resort reveal potential correlations between tourist sentiments and seasonal fluctuations in tourist volume. (2) T-tests, multiple regression analyses, and mediation effect tests of the questionnaire data indicate that while no significant difference in perceived crowding was found between new and returning tourists, its effects on emotions, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions differed markedly. (3) To be specific, for new tourists, the effects of perceived crowding on emotions, degrees of satisfaction, and behavioral intentions are dual-sided while for returning ones, perceived crowding leads directly to negative emotions and indirectly influences degrees of satisfaction and behavioral intentions. The findings of the study offer important theoretical implications for the study of tourism crowding and of the expectation theory and provide practical insights for crowd management in theme parks.

Social media, through its communication effect, contributes to overtourism in cultural heritage sites. Using Xiaoxitian Scenic Area, also known as Little Western Paradise, as a case study, and by doing coding analysis of online texts on the basis of grounded theory and by constructing a three-dimensional analysis framework of media-tourists-cultural heritage sites, this study explores the characteristics and formation mechanism of overtourism in cultural heritage sites driven by social media. Key findings include: (1) social media constitutes a key driving factor for overtourism by transforming the symbolic production and marketing paths of cultural heritage sites through algorithm-based recommendation mechanism and user-generated contents (UGCs) and by spurring the emergence of media pilgrimage through its fission style dissemination. (2) Overtourism in cultural heritage sites is characterized by four distinctive traits: sharp seasonal fluctuations, significant spatial clustering, excessive symbolic consumption, and pronounced contradictions between conservation and utilization. (3) The phenomenon of overtourism in cultural heritage sites emerges from the complex interplay of four key factors under mediatized context: media dissemination, tourist behaviors, resource endowments, and site management. Based on the findings, the study proposed measures and suggestions for addressing overtourism in cultural heritage sites from the perspectives of governments, scenic areas, tourists and local communities. The results of the study can provide theoretical and practical references for promoting sustainable development of tourism in cultural heritage sites.

Government tourism policies, a crucial instrument for promoting regional economic growth and driving sustainable resource utilization, have long been faced with a persistent gap between technical rationality and target audience acceptance regarding their effectiveness. Taking the implementation of Yunnan provincial government’s tourism policies in Shangri-La City as a case study, this study draws on social cognitive theory and employs the PMC index model together with the entropy-weighted TOPSIS method. By integrating dual perspectives of both policymakers and target audience, i.e. community residents, the study investigates how local government tourism policies can balance instrumental rationality with local social demands through institutional design. Findings reveal: (1) local governments exhibit several shortcomings in policy formulation, including time lag, over-emphasis on results among goals, imbalanced resource allocation, and limited policy instruments. (2) Residents’ policy acceptance levels vary significantly across different demographics, with the influencing factor of educational level showing the highest degree of group differentiation in acceptance levels, presenting an overall trend of higher acceptance degrees for residents with higher education. The influencing factors of age and occupation also demonstrate certain group differentiation, but the influencing factor of the length of residence shows relatively limited differentiation. (3) The youth group (17~28 years old) and middle-aged group (29~50 years old) demonstrate significantly higher policy acceptance levels than other age groups, and individuals with higher educational attainments and government employees similarly exhibit relatively high acceptance levels. (4) Barriers to policy acceptance across different educational groups show heterogeneous characteristics: for highly educated groups, obstacles are primarily concentrated at the personal cognitive levels, whereas for less-educated groups, barriers are widely distributed across personal, behavioral, and environmental dimensions, with the environmental dimension being particularly prominent. This study provides empirical evidence and theoretical insights for precise formulation of tourism industry policies, multi-level governance of tourist destinations, and effective implementation of local government initiatives.