Strengthening regional cooperation is a critical path to breaking the border shielding effect and promoting the high-quality development of tourism in old revolutionary base areas. Taking 538 scenic spots in the Hunan-Jiangxi border region as an old revolutionary base area, as the research object, this paper constructs a “Potential Energy-Development-Potential” (PEDP) diagnostic framework based on the theories of regional tourism cooperation for measuring the development level and potential of regional tourism cooperation. The findings show that: (1) the development level of tourism cooperation in the Hunan-Jiangxi border region presents significant inter-provincial spatial barriers, showing a non-equilibrium pattern of “strong intra-provincial cooperation but weak cross-provincial cooperation”. An “axis-radiation” model centered on 5A-level scenic spots such as Jinggang Mountain and Wugong Mountain has been initially formed in the region. The northern region has taken the lead in breaking the border shielding effect, while the southeastern region has fallen into a “cooperative island” dilemma due to a lack of radiation from core nodes. (2) The tourism cooperation potential energy in the Hunan-Jiangxi border region features spatial characteristics of high-energy polarization in the peripheral areas and high-density support in the core areas. The circular radiation belt composed of 5A-level scenic spots including Lushan and Juzizhou serves as an high-level growth pole driving the regional tourism development in the old revolutionary base areas. Meanwhile, the red tourism scenic spot clusters in the core areas constitute a stable collaborative hinterland, forming a gradient hierarchical functional system of “hub-intermediary-periphery”. (3) The distribution of tourism cooperation potential in the Hunan-Jiangxi border region displays a significant spatial mismatch and a pattern of “high in the west and low in the east” that follows the law of high-value contiguous areas in the core areas and gradient attenuation in the periphery. High-grade scenic spots generally have a structural mismatch of “high potential energy - low development - high potential”, and 5A-level scenic spots have a high potential value, which is the strategic orientation for future cooperation. The core areas present a trend of stock optimization, while the peripheral areas have become a new space for potential growth by leveraging the huge potential energy of high-grade nodes. This study provides operational analytical tools and empirical support for precise assessment of the coordinated tourism development in underdeveloped areas such as revolutionary base areas that cross administrative boundaries.

Through its chain-linkage effects, tourism consumption can effectively integrate resource elements, empower the innovation, quality improvement and efficiency enhancement of various business formats, serving as a practical paradigm to guide the upgrading of residents’ consumption and achieve sound and sustainable integrated development, which is of great significance for the revitalization and development of the old revolutionary base areas. Taking 108 county-level administrative units in the former Central Soviet Area as research objects, this study constructs an “allometric growth analysis framework of tourism consumption and integrated development”, and employs the allometric growth model and geographical detector to investigate the law of allometric growth and its driving factors. The findings reveal that: (1) areas with medium-high tourism consumption levels largely overlap with regions rich in red tourism resources, while the level of integrated development exhibits a spatial pattern of “high-value diffusion and low-value agglomeration”. Moreover, the growth center has extended from the central region to the northwest region since 2021. (2) Regarding allometric relationships, there is a significant nonlinear relationship between the two variables. The longitudinal growth relationship primarily exhibits negative allometric type II, while the horizontal growth relationship mainly manifests as negative allometric type III. This reveals a structural imbalance prevalent in old revolutionary base areas, characterized by “consumption leading while integration lags”. The spatial differentiation of allometric growth types is significant across different zones. (3) The allometric relationship between tourism consumption and integrated development results from the combined effects of multiple factors, with their interactions exhibiting an enhancing effect. Technological innovation capacity and transportation accessibility serve as the dominant factors influencing the spatial differentiation between the two. The study reveals the allometric growth relationship between tourism consumption and integrated development, along with its driving factors, providing crucial reference for formulating differentiated and targeted revitalization policies for old revolutionary base areas in the new era.

Red tourism serves as a vital pathway for the economic and social development of old revolutionary base areas and residents’ support is one of the key factors affecting sustainable development of red tourism. Integrating the social exchange theory and the theory of planned behavior, this study constructs a macro-micro multilevel complex causal model of residents’ support for red tourism in old revolutionary base areas. Using the Nanliang old revolutionary base area as a case study, this study employs fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to comprehensively examine the configurational relationships among influencing factors, including behavioral attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, multidimensional benefit perceptions, and cost perceptions. The findings are as follows: (1) the antecedent conditions for residents’ support for red tourism in old revolutionary base areas are heterogeneous and multiple. (2) Three typical pathways are identified, i.e. cultural norm-low cost driven, ability-environment compensation, and high cost-multiple benefit trade-off. (3) There are differences in the formation mechanisms of support behaviors for red tourism between residents in core and non-core areas, with the former exhibiting a benefit-driven pathway and the latter a participation-driven pathway. This study deepens the theoretical understanding of the formation mechanisms underlying residents’ support for red tourism in old revolutionary base areas, enriches case studies on tourism support, and provides theoretical foundations for formulating differentiated development strategies for different types of tourism destinations.

Due to the data lack on economic benefits and moral education outcomes of red tourism, it is a challenge to evaluate the performance of the red tourism policies. This study incorporates dual incentives from the red tourism policies on both supply and potential demand of the red tourism scenic spots (hereinafter referred to as “scenic spots”) into a spatial model of market competition. Based on the assumption that tourists act as rational economic agents making “utility-maximizing decisions”, and drawing on the Haff model, a predictive model for the attractiveness scale of scenic spots is constructed to analyze the potential impact of red tourism policies. The findings reveal: (1) the policy primarily enhances scenic spots quality and services as the main supply-side mechanism; however, the impacts on supply varies across different scenic spots and areas, with scenic spots in the old revolution base areas being most affected. (2) The demand-side mechanism mainly involves promotional campaigns to stimulate travel decision-making behavior and attract potential visitors. However, due to varying probabilities of tourists from different origins visiting these areas, the policy’s effectiveness differs across regions. Eastern areas with larger potential markets show greater demand stimulation, particularly in the old revolution base areas (especially in areas that have recently alleviated from poverty). (3) Due to the interplay of multiple factors, the impact of policies on the supply and demand may exhibit spatial mismatches. This study innovatively uses the geographical method to evaluate the potential impact of the red tourism policy, which is helpful for the similar policy makers to estimate the policy outcomes, particularly the spatial variations in those outcomes.

In the “Third Front Construction” regions, cities have long been constrained by systemic development bottlenecks such as resource depletion and a monolithic industrial structure. Industrial tourism has emerged as a critical pathway for promoting urban transformation and sustainable development in these regions. Based on panel data from cities in the “Third Front Construction” regions from 2011 to 2022, this study employs a system dynamics (SD) simulation model, structured around four subsystems—industrial economy, technological innovation, social livelihood, and ecological environment—to analyze the intrinsic mechanisms and optimal pathways through which industrial tourism influences high-quality urban development in these regions. The core control parameters, including the growth rates of industrial tourist arrivals, industrial tourism revenue, online attention to industrial tourism, industrial park expansion, and general student enrollment, are selected. Four scenarios—baseline, high-speed, low-speed, and coordinated—are simulated to assess the impact of industrial tourism on high-quality development in these cities and predict their dynamic evolution trends. The findings indicate: the coordinated development scenario yields the optimal simulation results for the high-quality development index of cities in the "Third Front Construction" regions, suggesting that this scenario could enable the region to achieve its high-quality development goals by 2035. Building on the simulation results, the study proposes targeted strategies for leveraging industrial tourism to empower high-quality urban development in these regions. This not only refines the theoretical framework for the transformation of industrial cities but also offers practical pathways for other areas in China with potential for industrial tourism to advance high-quality urban development.

Natural disasters not only threaten the safety of cultural heritage in traditional villages but also profoundly affect residents’ value cognition and protection actions toward heritage. Based on questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews with residents from 11 national-level traditional village communities in northwestern Sichuan, this study explores how residents’ disaster risk perception and disaster reduction behaviors affect their value cognition and protection actions of cultural heritage, and evaluates the moderating effect of residents’ social capital in the above-mentioned paths. The results show that: (1) residents’ disaster risk perception exerts no significant influence on their disaster reduction behaviors, value cognition of cultural heritage or protection actions, while their value cognition of cultural heritage has a stable positive impact on such protection actions. (2) Residents’ disaster reduction behaviors can significantly improve their value cognition and directly promote their protection actions of cultural heritage, thus forming a chain effect of “Disaster Reduction Behavior→Value Cognition→Protection Actions”. (3) Residents’ social capital plays a significantly positive moderating role in promoting disaster reduction behaviors and enhancing the value cognition of cultural heritage, but the moderating effects of its single dimensions—neighborhood aid, place attachment and government trust—are not significant. The study holds that policy intervention for traditional villages with high natural disaster risks should shift from the traditional disaster prevention and reduction knowledge education to “behavioral empowerment” centered on institutional support and community mobilization. By systematically cultivating residents’ social capital such as neighborhood aid, place attachment and government trust, the social foundation of the transformation path of “Disaster Risk Perception→Disaster Reduction Behavior→Cultural Heritage Value Cognitive→Cultural Heritage Protection Action” can be consolidated, thereby advancing the construction of disaster resilience and the protection and sustainable utilization of cultural heritage in traditional villages.

Heritage tourism development brings both opportunities and challenges to surrounding rural areas. This study explores the pathways to successful livelihoods among residents, aiming to reveal the significance of heritage tourism for inclusive rural development and address the practical need for coordinated development between heritage sites and surrounding villages. This study, using the Wulingyuan world heritage area as a case study, employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to conduct an empirical analysis of the livelihoods strategies and capital combinations that drive successful livelihoods of residents in rural areas adjacent to the heritage site. The findings reveal that: (1) tourism development has driven the diversification of livelihood strategies, resulting in four predominant types: tourism-participatory, tourism-oriented, labor-oriented, and agriculture-oriented. (2) Different livelihood strategies correspond to distinct patterns of livelihood capital allocation. Tourism-dominated households demonstrate superiority in material, financial, and social capital; tourism-participatory households possess greater human and financial capital; labor-dominated households exhibit stronger mental capital; while agriculture-dominated households display systemic deficiencies across multiple dimensions including human, financial, and social capital. (3) Residents’ successful livelihood pathways under different strategies exhibit distinct capital combinations. Tourism-participatory, tourism-dominant, and labor-dominant strategies form successful pathways with their own characteristics, while agriculture-dominant strategy fail to establish stable successful pathways. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of sustainable livelihoods for residents adjacent to heritage tourism destinations and provides empirical evidence and theoretical reference for formulating targeted policies to promote the equitable distribution of tourism dividendsand the sustainable development in heritage tourism areas.

Though the rural elite is a key driver in rural revitalization and heritage conservation, existing studies still fall short of providing an in-depth understanding of the formation mechanism of the group in the social environment of agricultural heritage sites. By employing semi-structured interviews and the grounded theory, this study conducts in-depth analysis of the environment and mechanism of the formation of Shexian Dryland Stone Terraced System and the findings are as follows: (1) the growth of the rural elite in the agricultural heritage site follows a virtuous cycle of environmental identification, value transformation, and feedback and reshaping. Within the framework of five specific GIAHS criteria, the growth of the elite has experienced four sequential stages, i.e. initial growth stage, capacity-building stage, influence-expansion stage, and function-realization and feedback stage. Through cyclical coupling of three core mechanisms, i.e. identification and interpretation, mobilization and integration, and decision-making and action, a virtuous cycle of joint-growth between the rural elite and the rural community is ultimately realized. (2) The growth paths of the rural elite in the agricultural heritage site exhibit significant typological differences. Economic, political, and social elites, and elites with clout in two or more fields, show that their growth couples with different environmental dimensions, which means differentiated growth mechanisms collectively constitute a network with multiple drivers for the development of agricultural heritage sites. (3) Centered on the goals of heritage conservation and development, the agricultural heritage site sees an empowering society with the Terrace Association as its hub, reshaping the functions of the rural elite from leading wealth creators to both heritage guardians and community development leaders. In this study, a mechanism model of in-depth coupling between the growth of the rural elite and the environment of agricultural heritage sites is constructed, the driving mechanism of the environment in shaping elite functions is explained from a dynamic perspective, and practical insights for rural talent cultivation and heritage value transformation are provided.

Evaluating the value of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) and coordinating supply-demand relationships from the perspective of divergence between hosts’ and guests’ perceptions is of great significance for promoting the synergistic realization of multiple values of national park ecosystems. Focusing on small and medium-scale spaces such as recreational areas in national parks, this study takes the Shuimanhe Scenic Area of Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park as a case, and adopts questionnaire survey, participatory mapping, two-dimensional matrix analysis and other methods to investigate and analyze the spatial differentiation characteristics of CES perceptions between hosts and guests. The results are as follows: (1) demographic variables such as occupation, education level, and place of origin, as well as factors including the frequency of visits to the scenic area in the past year, exert significant impacts on the number of CES marked points for both hosts and guests. (2) The hotspots of CES perceived by guests are mostly concentrated along the main tourist routes, while the value points perceived by hosts are distributed more widely and dispersedly. The iconic scenic spots serve as concentrated areas of high thermal values for both hosts’ and guests’ perceptions. Scenic spots with prominent landscape and cultural heterogeneity show large differences in perceived thermal values between hosts and guests. For CES types that can be directly evaluated through physical sensory experience, including aesthetic value, healing value, and outdoor recreation value, the spatial differentiation of perceptions between hosts and guests is small. On the contrary, relatively abstract CES types with more complex cognitive processes, such as spiritual value, educational value, and inspirational value, present significant spatial differences in perceptions. (3) The ranking of perceived importance of different CES types is generally consistent between hosts and guests, while remarkable differences exist in the perceived importance of healing value. From the perspective of spatial distribution intensity and host-guest perceptions, the index of outdoor recreation value is the highest, followed by aesthetic and educational values, and inspiration value is the lowest. (4) The two-dimensional matrix analysis indicates that outdoor recreation and aesthetic values perceived by both hosts and guests are located in the high-high quadrant; only the educational value perceived by hosts falls into the low-high quadrant; heritage, spiritual and inspiration values perceived by both hosts and guests are distributed in the low-low quadrant; and the healing value perceived by guests lies in the high-low quadrant. This study can provide robust empirical evidence for exploring the realization pathways of CES oriented toward supply-demand matching and effectively expands the methodological system for assessing CES perceptual characteristics.

Scientific evaluation of tourism ecological security is of great significance for the coordinated and sustainable development of tourism economy and ecological environment in the border area of Yunnan Province. This study focuses on eight border prefectures and cities in Yunnan, which are representative in both ecology and tourism, and constructs a comprehensive evaluation index system for tourism ecological security based on the DPSIR model. Using the entropy weight method, TOPSIS method, and obstacle degree model, it analyzes the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of tourism ecological security at the prefecture-city level and key obstacle factors from 2010 to 2022. The results show: (1) in the temporal dimension, the overall level of tourism ecological security in the border area of Yunnan Province is relatively low, exhibiting phased fluctuation patterns—rising fluctuating from 2010 to 2019, slightly declining in 2020 due to the impact of a public health emergency, and continuing to recover from 2021 to 2022. (2) In the spatial dimension, low-value zones of tourism ecological security are more widely distributed, predominantly consisting of risk and sensitive levels, with Xishuangbanna Prefecture in the southern region showing breakthrough improvements in certain years. The changes in tourism ecological security in this area are categorized into stable, improving, and complex types, with the complex type being the dominant category. (3) Regarding obstacle factors, the obstacle degree of each system layer fluctuates, with the influence system consistently ranking first, and social and economic indicators remaining the primary obstacle factors. This study provides a new theoretical perspective and practical basis for promoting ecological protection and sustainable tourism development in the region.

Short videos have blossomed into a powerful tool for marketing tourism destination as their content quality plays a critical role in laying the groundwork for tourists’ subsequent actions. Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response Theory (SOR for short), this study classifies short video marketing content into three types: narrative, scene based, and emotional. By taking the sense of presence and video-induced sympathy as mediator variables, and key opinion leaders and individual escape motivation as moderator variables, this study develops a chain model of “marketing content, sense of presence/video-induced empathy, and behavioral intention”. By analyzing 545 valid questionnaires with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM for short) and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA for short), this study finds the following: (1) all three content types have significant positive effects on behavioral intention, with emotional content exerting the strongest effect and the mediating effect of video-induced empathy stronger than that of the sense of presence, indicating emotional content and video-induced empathy are the core elements in short video marketing for tourism destinations. (2) Key opinion leader marketing demonstrates a double-edged sword effect, as it can enhance scene experience but may also weaken the effectiveness of emotional content, reflecting the risk that commercialization erodes emotional authenticity, and users with high escape motivation are more likely to become emotionally involved in scene based content. (3) Configurational analysis identifies three types of high intention pathways, namely the emotional connection oriented type, the visual communication oriented type, and the experiential perception oriented type, indicating that the formation of high intention depends on the synergistic interaction of multiple factors. Overall, this study develops an integrated framework explaining how short video marketing content shapes tourists’ behavioral intentions, extends theoretical perspectives on tourism behaviors in new media contexts, and provides empirical evidence and managerial implications for tourism destinations to implement more targeted short video marketing strategies.

At the critical stage where the homestay industry is shifting from quantitative expansion to high-quality development, clarifying the mechanism through which host-guest interaction influences brand trust has become a key issue for enhancing brand competitiveness. This study takes Floral B&Bs as the research subject and, drawing upon brand relationship theory and affective solidarity theory, constructs a conceptual model of “host-guest interaction—tourism experience quality—brand trust”. Using questionnaire surveys and structural equation modeling (SEM), the study empirically examines the influence of host-guest interaction on brand trust, as well as the mediating role of tourism experience quality. The results show that: (1) within the tourism homestay scenario, each dimension of host-guest interaction (information interaction, product/service interaction, and interpersonal interaction) has direct and significantly positive effects on both tourism experience quality and brand trust. (2) The quality of the tourism experience plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between host-guest interaction and brand trust. (3) Among the three dimensions of interaction, the mediating pathway involving interpersonal interaction is the most significant. This paper focuses on the micro-mechanism of host-guest interaction on brand trust in tourism homestays, revealing the logic of brand trust generation in non-standard accommodation formats, fills the gap in the applicability of traditional brand trust theory in personalized service scenarios, and provides an interactive-oriented practical reference for homestay brand building under the background of the new development stage.

Internet celebrity marketing is a crucial driver for the expansion of the diving tourism market. By combining objective situations with individual micro-psychology, systematically deconstructing and exploring the impact effect and transmission mechanism of internet celebrity traits on consumers’diving tourism intentions, it can compensate for the shortcomings of traditional research that emphasizes the industrial perspective while neglecting the micro-individual level. This provides an important theoretical basis and practical insights for the precise marketing and experience product design of diving tourism destinations. From the economic form of “Internet plus”, internet celebrity traits, virtual community sense, and perceived challenge are abstracted. Based on the modified Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model, an influencing factor model of diving tourists’behavioral intentions is constructed. The results show that: (1) internet celebrity traits have a significant positive impact on diving tourism intentions. (2) Behavioral attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and virtual community sense play a mediating role between internet celebrity traits and diving tourism intentions. (3) Perceived challenge plays a positive moderating role in the relationships between internet celebrity traits and subjective norms, as well as between internet celebrity traits and behavioral attitudes. This study not only verifies the universal positive impact of internet celebrity traits on tourism intentions but also expands the research boundaries of traditional TPB in the context of high-risk experiential tourism and digital marketing, deepening the understanding of how internet celebrities promote the consumption upgrade of new tourism formats in the new economic form.

As museums become increasingly intelligent and social media is shaping our lives, museum visitors are shifting from passive receivers to active value co-creators. However, within the non-profit public cultural space of museums, the mechanism of and boundary conditions for how the process of museum visitors’ value co-creation drives their behavioral evolution remain unclear. Drawing on the customer-dominant logic, this study aims to uncover the transformation path from value co-creation to social sharing. To this end, this study constructs a mechanism model of value co-creation, immersive experience value, and social sharing intention, introduces social support as a contextual moderator, and conducts empirical analysis based on data of 386 questionnaires collected from visitors at four museums of different kinds in Guangzhou City. Findings indicate that: (1) museum visitors’ value co-creation does not only directly enhance their social sharing intention, but also exert an indirect impact on social sharing intention through the mediating effect of immersive experience value. (2) Social support strengthens the promoting effect of value co-creation on immersive experience value. This study reveals the mechanism of and boundary conditions for the museum visitors’ value co-creation to transform from act to experience and finally to intention. It provides managerial insights for improving museum service experiences and promoting cultural communication.

Although existing studies on tourism geography cover the aspect of tourism geography education in China, they are often in generalities and lack comprehensive empirical research on faculty strength, educational levels, curriculum systems, and teaching content. Among the 97 institutions of higher education and 44 scientific research institutes listed on the website of the Geographical Society of China, 62 institutions offering tourism geography majors or courses are selected as samples of the study. Information concerning faculty, recruitment, program offerings, and curriculum and courses on the official websites of these institutions is analyzed in this study and findings are as follows: (1) since the 1980s, the national and local demands for tourism development and planning in China have offered the discipline of geography abundant opportunities to play a role in socioeconomic practices, directly giving birth to an applied branch of geographical science, i.e. tourism geography. (2) Academic research on tourism geography by national research institutions and geography departments of comprehensive universities, coupled with the cultivation of high-level talents, has not only cultivated high-quality faculty teams but has also driven geography departments of local institutions of higher education to transform the education of the discipline. These local institutions have renamed the departments to expand disciplinary connotations and have added new majors to expand enrollment. (3) Under the reference system of geography, tourism geography is subdivided into general, regional, and applied tourism geography. Consequently, teaching content becomes more hierarchical, refined, and in-depth, further enhancing the quality of tourism geography talent cultivation. (4) The knowledge sources and structural evolution of tourism geography reflect the alignment of tourism geography curriculum in China with the international research system as well as the summarization of the latest theoretical achievements derived from Chinese tourism geography practices. This study facilitates a systematic understanding of the characteristics and values of China's tourism geography education among domestic and international geographical and tourism academic communities.