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.
Modern tourism industry system is an important part of China's modern industry system. Measuring its construction level and analyzing its influencing factors have important theoretical value and practical significance for driving the construction of a tourism power with high-quality tourism development, thus helping to achieve the grand goal of Chinese path to modernization. This study Constructed a multi-dimensional evaluation indicator system, measured the comprehensive score of the construction level of China’s modern tourism industry system, adopted kernel density estimation, exploratory spatial data analysis and Theil index to depict the spatial and temporal characteristics of the evolution of the construction level, and combined with the spatial Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) model to analyze the key factors affecting the construction of the modern tourism industry system.The findings are as follows: (1) during the study period, the overall level of construction of China’s modern tourism industry system is relatively low and the growth is slow, and spatially the overall level is relatively low and shows a gradient pattern of “East-Central-Northeast-West”. (2) The construction level exhibits significant positive spatial correlation across the entire territory, manifesting as an “East-hot, West-cold” agglomeration pattern with pronounced polarization. Further variance decomposition indicates that intra-regional differences dominate overall variation, and the east and west are the main contributors to the differences. (3) The market consumption demand exhibits a primary driving effect, with certain eastern provinces and the Northeast region amplifying gains, while central and western provinces show diminishing returns. The cultural market presents a “resource curse” paradox: dynamic heritage transmission in the west drives gains, whereas cultural commodification in high-development zones of the east and central regions leads to decline. The degree of openness demonstrates a coastal polarization effect, with technology spillovers and institutional learning forming outward-oriented growth poles. Transportation conditions exhibit regional heterogeneity, inhibiting or only marginally stimulating the western and northeastern regions while significantly driving growth in the central and eastern regions. Urbanization levels has shifted from a negative constraint to a limited driver of growth, with some regions in eastern, central, and western China recently entering the ascending phase of an inverted U-shape curve.This study measured the development level and spatiotemporal evolution of the modern tourism industry system and identified its key influencing factors. It thereby deepened the understanding of the development mechanisms of modern tourism and provided a theoretical foundation as well as policy insights for promoting high-quality development and regional coordination in the tourism sector.
Industrial resilience is a key support and inherent requirement for the high-quality development of the economy. Investigating the impact and mechanism of tourism industry agglomeration on tourism industry resilience is of great significance for building a modern industrial system and achieving high-quality development in the tourism industry. This study analyzes the theoretical mechanism of how tourism industry agglomeration affects tourism industry resilience. Using panel data from 39 cities in Guizhou, Guangxi, and Yunnan from 2013 to 2023, the level of tourism industry resilience is measured. The study employs benchmark regression models, mediation effect models, and spatial econometric models to examine the direct effects, mediating effects, and spatial spillover effects of tourism industry agglomeration on the resilience of the tourism industry. The results indicate: (1) the overall level of tourism industry resilience in the Guizhou-Guangxi-Yunnan regions exhibited an upward trend during the study period, but with differentiated characteristics. Among them, demand resilience has improved most rapidly, while supply resilience has lagged behind, and structural resilience has gradually strengthened. Spatially, tourism industry resilience distributed in the order of “Guizhou > Guangxi > Yunnan”, with a radiation pattern from provincial capitals to surrounding cities. (2) The impact of tourism industry agglomeration on tourism industry resilience is unbalanced. It has the most significant impact on tourism demand resilience, followed by tourism supply resilience, while its impact on tourism structural resilience is relatively minor, revealing a “demand-driven → supply response → structural optimization” agglomeration mechanism. Moreover, there is spatial heterogeneity, with the impact being “Guizhou > Yunnan > Guangxi”. (3) Technological innovation plays a non-substitutable mediating role in the process of tourism industry agglomeration promoting tourism industry resilience, revealing the key mechanism of how agglomeration effects are transformed into resilience. (4) Tourism industry agglomeration fosters a spatially self-enhancement mechanism for local tourism industry resilience by polarizing the tourism industry resilience of neighboring regions. The research will provide valuable insights for strengthening the resilience of the tourism system and promoting high-quality development in the tourism industry.
Tourist moral behavior can effectively protect the ecological environment and cultural landscape of tourist destinations, contributing to their sustainable development. Based on social learning theory and the “Stimulus-Organism-Response” theory, this paper collects 18 qualitative interview data (Study 1) and 311 questionnaire data (Study 2), and uses a mixed-method approach to verify the differences in the impact of “experiential” moral tourism and “consequentialist” moral tourism experiences on tourists’ moral behaviors, as well as to explore the mechanism of moral experiences in “experiential” moral tourism influencing tourists’ moral behaviors. The results show that: (1) compared with traditional “consequence-based” moral tourism, “experience-based” moral tourism aligns more closely with tourists’ motivations by reflecting the characteristics of the experience economy, thus being more popular among tourists and more likely to guide tourists’ moral behaviors. (2) Positive, negative, and conflicting moral experiences all have a significant positive impact on tourists’ moral perceptions and moral behaviors, with positive moral experiences yielding the strongest effect, followed by negative moral experiences. (3) Tourists’ moral perceptions mediates the influence of moral experiences on moral behaviors. Destinations should leverage tourism's inherent “enjoyment and relaxation” nature by shifting from “emphasizing consequences” to “focusing on experiences”, and pay attention to the integration of moral experience content in the development of moral tourism products, so as to strengthen tourists’ moral experiences, enhance their moral perceptions, make their moral behaviors occur naturally.
The spiritual and emotional experiences in tourism activities are becoming increasingly important. These two aspects are not mutually exclusive but rather interactively connected and dynamically coupled. By exploring concepts of spirits, spirituality, spiritual experiences, emotions, emotional experiences, and tourist emotions, this study constructs a relational approach to the connection between spiritual experiences and emotional experiences. Research findings include: (1) the relationship between spiritual and emotional experiences progresses in depth, i.e. from “sensory perception” to “emotional comprehension” and then to “spiritual insight” and finally culminating in “life transformation”. (2) Spiritual and emotional experiences are interconnected, sharing commonalities while exhibiting distinct characteristics. Emotional fulfillment caters to tourists’ preferences, whereas spiritual guidance embodies values, representing the sublimation of emotional experiences. Both emotional fulfillment and spiritual guidance converge toward the core objective of life enrichment. (3) The interactive mechanism between spiritual and emotional experiences is a dynamic process of “environmental perception—emotional resonance—spiritual elevation”. Tourists gain a sense of life's meaning through tourism experiences. (4) Future research should focus more on the interactive connections, influencing mechanisms, and theoretical frameworks between spirituality and emotions of tourism experiences, and new pathways for tourism development should be innovated and applied to the development of cultural tourism resources. By constructing a relational approach to spirituality and emotions, this study addresses existing theoretical gaps in understanding interactive mechanisms between spirituality and emotions. It provides theoretical foundations and practical guidance for deepening the essence of tourism experiences and developing products that meet tourists' profound needs.
Value co-creation behaviors serve as an important way to enhance tourist experience quality. Using Xi’an city as a case study, based on the embodied cognition theory and the cognition-affect-behavior theory, and by deepening the connotation of the concept of tourist experience quality and developing scales, this study analyzes the interactive mechanism between tourists’ value co-creation behaviors and tourist experience quality. Key findings include: (1) tourist experience quality is tourists’ retrospective evaluation of the embodied experience in three dimensions, including technical experience quality, environmental experience quality, and functional experience quality. (2) Tourists’ pre-trip and mid-trip value co-creation behaviors significantly exert positive effect on tourist experience quality, which in turn significantly exerts positive effect on post-trip value co-creation behaviors; furthermore, tourists’ pre-trip and mid-trip value co-creation behaviors exert positive effects on post-trip value co-creation behaviors through technical and environmental dimensions. (3) The cyclical embodied experience system formed through the interaction between tourists’ value co-creation behaviors and tourist experiences is the root cause for tourists’ value co-creation behaviors to improve the overall tourist experience quality of the destination.
With their visual immediacy and efficiency, short videos have increasingly become an important channel for the public to access information. This study selects twenty highly popular travel short videos on the Douyin platform and collects 4 540 viewer comments as its data. Drawing on emotional contagion theory and employing text analysis methods, together with tools such as the PyLDAvis model, ROST CM6 software, and the SnowNLP model, the study investigates the pathways of positive emotional contagion among viewers and the mechanisms through which positive emotions influence viewers’ travel intentions and travel decision-making. The results indicate that: (1) positive emotional contagion follows two pathways: primary emotional contagion arising from interactions with short videos, and secondary emotional contagion driven by social sharing. (2) based on positive emotional contagion, viewers initiate a five-stage travel decision-making process comprising “cognitive interpretation-itinerary planning-travel expectation-emotional resonance-social dissemination”. (3) positive emotional contagion influences travel decision-making through four mechanisms: positive emotions emerging from mirroring experiences that deepen destination image and viewers’ sense of psychological belonging; positive emotions enhancing immersion and dependence, prompting viewers to seek solace in digital spaces; positive emotions triggering self-projection and collective referencing, thereby facilitating the co-construction of symbolic meanings; and positive emotions driving short-video consumption, enabling broad dissemination of destination images. (4) positive emotional contagion further motivates viewers to participate in the production of travel-related short videos through their travel behaviors, thus forming a closed loop with short-video consumption. The study expands the theoretical applicability of emotional contagion theory, destination image theory, and the “encoding-decoding” framework within the context of digital-media tourism study. In practice, it proposes three strategies for optimizing the development of the tourism market in the new era: improving short-video operation strategies, addressing and transforming non-positive emotions, and leveraging emotion-driven marketing.
Tourist loyalty is of vital importance for the sustainable development of industrial tourism, which is now an important path for urban renewal and culture-tourism integration. Using the typical industrial tourist attraction Hechai 1972 Culture and Creativity Industry Park as a case study, based on improved Chinese Customer Satisfaction Index (CCSI) theory, and by employing the structural equation model, this paper analyzes the tourist loyalty driving mechanism. The results show that: (1) tourist expectations, a key factor affecting industrial tourists’ experiences before visit, not only indirectly affect perceived value and satisfaction through improving perceived quality, but also have a direct effect on both perceived value and satisfaction. Among the components of tourist expectations, consumption expectations and industrial cultural experience expectations have a higher influence intensity than landscape expectations. (2) Perceived quality is key to driving perceived value, among the two pathways through which visitor expectations influence satisfaction, the pathway mediated by perceived quality exhibits more pronounced effects, forming the core mechanism by which expectations translate into satisfaction. Within visitor perceived quality, scene service perception lags behind industrial heritage perception and industrial landscape perception in actual experiences, making it the primary target for improvement in tourist attractions. (3) Perceived quality and perceived value jointly influence tourist satisfaction that exerts the strongest and direct driving effect on loyalty. This paper reveals the formation mechanism of tourist loyalty in the context of industrial tourism, enriches the applicability of the CCSI model in the field of industrial tourism, and provides insight for industrial tourist attractions to optimize experience design and strengthen visitor recognition, and thus is of great significance for boosting the protection of industrial heritage and high-quality integration of culture and tourism.
Nature education, as an essential social function of protected areas, plays a critical role in promoting the coordinated development of ecological conservation and public engagement. Based on 726 relevant articles indexed in Web of Science and CNKI from 2000 to 2024, this study employs CiteSpace visualization and content analysis to systematically review the research progress and evolving hotspots of nature education in protected areas in globally. The results show that: (1) early research hotspots domestically and internationally primarily focused on the content and forms of nature education, and have gradually shifted toward educational approaches, interpretation, and educational effectiveness, ultimately forming a research framework encompassing spatial planning, resource evaluation, interpretive methods, collaborative mechanisms, and performance assessment. (2) research topics have progressively expanded to multi-stakeholder and multi-type contexts, contributing to the initial development of a relatively systematic knowledge system. (3) due to ongoing construction of China’s protected-area system, limitations in legislation and regulation, and insufficient interdisciplinary integration, domestic research—despite its rapid growth—still falls short of international studies in terms of theoretical development, research scope, and methodological and data diversity. Future research should strengthen the construction of localized theoretical frameworks, broaden research dimensions and depth, enhance the application of technologies and data, and promote interdisciplinary research. This will improve the practical effectiveness of nature education in protected areas and provide theoretical and policy references for their high-quality development.
Environmental education is the foundation for spreading the concept of ecological civilization and an important path to promote public participation in achieving the goal of building a Beautiful China. Internationally, environmental education research is an important interdisciplinary field that has undergone more than half a century of development and accumulated rich research results. However, domestic environmental education is still in the development stage and urgently needs theoretical references from the academic community. Based on this, this study collected 7624 articles published between 1968 and 2024 from the journals collected in Web of Science database. Using bibliometric analysis, keyword coding, and other techniques, a systematic analysis was conducted on the development trends, disciplinary backgrounds, and academic hotspots of international environmental education research. The study primarily covers three aspects: (1) it explored the concept and evolution of international environmental education, sorted out the number of literature, publishing phases, major published journals, hot keywords, geographical distribution, etc. (2) it summarizes three main contents of environmental education research: environmental education philosophy, environmental education implementation, and environmental education effectiveness. (3) three major characteristics of international environmental education research have been extracted. Based on international research and combined with the theoretical and practical needs of China, direction suggestions were proposed for environmental education and its research in China. The research aims to provide a systematic reference for the theoretical construction of environmental education in China, elevate the academic standards and international influence of Chinese environmental education research, strengthen industry-academia-research collaboration in environmental education practices, and promote the achievement of ecological civilization construction goals in China.
This research investigates the spatial evolution characteristics of study tour enterprises and their influencing factors, which can provide a scientific basis for the coordinated planning of the study tour industry and the promotion of regional balanced development, thereby effectively supporting the construction of an education-oriented nation and the implementation of the cultural and tourism integration strategy. Based on 6,763 pieces of data on study tour operators spanning the period from 2013 to 2024, and by employing the methods of Theil index and geospatial analysis, this study explores the spatio-temporal distribution patterns, influencing factors, and spatial heterogeneity of these study tour operators. Major findings include: (1) the number of study tour operators during the research period presents an inverted U-shaped trajectory with a peak in 2021 and subsequent gradual decline. (2) Spatial distribution keeps showing unbalanced nature, with Changsha City remaining the unchallenged core and intra-prefecture disparities having gradually converged over time. The scopes of the standard deviation ellipses show minimal variations, and their centers of gravity have shifted from Xiangtan City to Changsha City. Results of global spatial autocorrelation further confirm a significant positive clustering pattern, forming a high-value agglomeration centered on Changsha. (3) The spatial differentiation of these study tour operators is jointly shaped by multiple factors, including economic strength, policy environment, market demands, social conditions, and resource endowments, among which the explanatory power of two-factor interaction effects is significantly stronger than that of any single factor. (4) The spatial influence scales of different factors vary. Variables such as local government expenditures and tourist numbers exert nearly universal impacts, whereas the proportion of the tertiary industry and the numbers of primary and secondary school students demonstrate distinct localized effects.
