In tourism research, memorable tourism experience represents a popular perspective for evaluating tourism experiences. Kim, Ritchie, and McCormick (2012) developed a related scale applicable across various tourism contexts, though some controversies remain. This paper employs systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis methods to deeply explore international research progress on MTE, including its definition, differentiation, context, measurement, dimensions, antecedents, and consequences, and constructs a comprehensive research framework based on these findings. Key findings: (1) Memorable tourism experience can be defined as a post-travel experience sufficiently significant to be retained in long-term memory, with substantial influence on tourists’future behavioral decisions. (2) Research development can be divided into four stages: “germination period”, “formation period”, “development period”and“critical development period”. (3) MTE measurement currently relies on four main methods, for which this study provides in-depth analysis of applicable conditions. Regarding the seven-dimensional scale developed by Kim, Ritchie, and McCormick (2012) and its application in empirical studies, this paper finds that hedonism, involvement, novelty, and meaningfulness are the most prevalent dimensions for predicting tourist behavior. It also identifies potential new dimensions, including social interaction, perceived serendipity, negative feelings, and pleasure. (4) Based on CiteSpace literature clustering analysis, five major research themes are identified:“MTE frontiers”, “MTE modeling”, “cultural heritage tourism and experience co-creation”, “destination attributes and experience management” and “MTE and well-being”. Focusing on empirical research, the study systematically summarizes the driving factors, effects, and mechanisms of MTE. (5) For future research, six directions are proposed: conducting specific memory structure research across diverse populations, strengthening focus on negative MTE; promoting application of memory characteristic scales; expanding studies on MTE effects; constructing theoretical frameworks for memory management; promoting the integrated development of service-dominant logic.

With the rise in nostalgia-oriented consumption, rural homestays have become typical venues for experiencing rural life-emotional spaces where visitors retreat from urban bustle and seek psychological comfort. Against this backdrop, this study takes nostalgia-themed rural homestays as the research context and rigorously follows standardized procedures of scale development to construct and validate a measurement instrument for tourists’ nostalgic emotions. Study 1, grounded in a literature review and in-depth interviews, inductively and deductively clarified the connotation of nostalgic emotions and developed an initial pool of measurement items. Study 2 empirically explored and verified the scale’s dimensional structure through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Study 3 incorporated perceived authenticity and behavioral intention variables into a structural equation model, providing evidence of the scale’s satisfactory criterion-related validity. Through these three sequential studies, a four-dimensional, sixteen-item nostalgia emotion scale-comprising interpersonal nostalgia, personal nostalgia, imagery nostalgia, and historical nostalgia-was developed and validated empirically. This study contributes an objective and standardized tool for assessing nostalgic emotions among rural homestay tourists and offers practical implications for the development and marketing of nostalgia-themed rural accommodations.

Innovation is the core driving force of social progress and the key new productive force for the deep integration of culture and tourism. Based on the dual logic of form and content, this paper systematically reviews the evolution of China’s culture and tourism innovation over more than forty years, in the context of integration, from the perspective of innovation theory. The research shows that, jointly driven by the social environment, technological progress, and market demand, China’s culture and tourism innovation practices have achieved iterative upgrading, from root innovation, to domain innovation and then to dimensional innovation demonstrating dual integration characteristics of form and content innovation. Specifically, culture and tourism innovation has evolved from an early-stage unity of form and content, to mid-term dominance of content innovation, to later-stage form innovation dominance, and finally to a current reemergence of content innovation dominance. Using industrial value chain analysis tools, this paper conducts an in-depth analysis of culture and tourism content production and innovation processes. It reveals that content innovation at the dimensional level is the dominant model of current culture and tourism innovation, with the “creativity-leadership+technology-enpowerment” dual-track collaborative mechanism serving as the key pathway for driving deep integration of culture and tourism.

By collecting and screening 74 papers related to tourist destination image research in the big data environment — and published in the Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and Peking University Chinese Core Journal Catalog (2020 Edition), as of April 2023 — this study combs through the current status of the field, and analyzes and summarizes existing research from three perspectives — data (sources and modalities), methodology, and technology (tools) — and looks forward to future research trends. The research shows that user-generated content is the main data source, textual data is dominant in terms of modality, and content analysis is the basic method of tourist destination image research in the big data environment. Other commonly used methods in the field of computer science — such as sentiment analysis, topic modeling, image annotation, and image recognition — can also be classified into this category. Technically, application programming interfaces (APIs) and software tools are mostly used, and the application of deep learning mainly focuses on image data, which has not yet been fully investigated in research on the image of tourist destinations.

In the spring of 2023, a novel form of tourism emerged among college students, characterized by its brevity, tight itineraries, numerous destinations, and high intensity. This phenomenon has been dubbed“special forces-style tourism.”To examine the core attributes of this trend, this study analyzed online comments on social media platforms, leveraging a vast array of relevant textual data. First, a virtual ethnography approach was adopted to explore the origin and evolution of “special forces-style tourism,”followed by the application of text analysis methods to synthesize its fundamental features and emotional inclinations of“special forces-style tourists”toward it. Subsequently, interviews were conducted with active users who consistently provided high-quality, recently posted content, contributing significantly to the overall high frequency of posts in the history of the platform. Through thematic analysis, the study examined the nuanced characteristics, underlying causes, and repercussions of“special forces-style tourism.” The research findings indicate that “special forces-style tourism” possesses distinctive temporal, spatial, economic, and sightseeing features, setting it apart from traditional tourism models; its emergence is primarily attributed to peer influence, rapidly spreading among the younger demographic, particularly college students, via the Internet; it has both individual and collective impacts; and its features, causes, and effects can be conceptualized using a three-stage model. The contributions of this study are, first, clarifying the distinctions between “special forces-style tourism” and other forms like check-in tourism and budget travel, enhancing explanatory power from a peer-to-peer perspective; second, providing strategic insights for tourist destinations and attractions to cater to and attract“special forces-style tourists”; and third, offering guidance for young demographics emphasizing cultural immersion, self-identification, and self-image formation through tourism activities.

Technology has become an important driving force in high-quality tourism development. Macroscopically, this study discusses the present situation and tasks of technological innovation in China’s tourism industry and the important areas of technology-enabled high-quality tourism development. At the meso level, this study analyzes the practical paths and research issues of digital technology-empowered tourist destinations. At the micro level, this study discusses the impact of digital visual technology and various digital technologies on the tourist experience and their application in tourist locations such as museums. This study draws the following conclusions: (1) China should carry out demand-oriented technological innovation in the field of tourism, improve the quality of tourist services, upgrade elements of tourist enterprises, modernize the governance skills of mass tourism in various destinations, and form a green development capacity for the sustainable use of resources so that technology will comprehensively empower high-quality tourism development. (2) AI technology empowers high-quality tourism development, especially in shaping a more coordinated and greener tourism development model. (3) The practice of applying digital technology to promote the high-quality development of tourist destinations has given rise to issues worthy of study, such as the “liquid interaction” between destinations and tourists, value co-creation by multiple participants, and the construction of digital ecology and digital competitiveness. (4) Innovation in tourist experience products and services empowered by digital visual technology can help China upgrade and develop its tourist industry in the direction of service innovation, product technology, and brand uniqueness. (5) Digital technology reshapes the forms of museums, enriches the content and methods of museum exhibitions, enhances visitors’ immersive experiences and edutainment, and helps create more diverse communication channels.

New quality productive forces, as a novel driving force for the high-quality development of the tourism industry, essentially represents the result of collaborative innovation among“Technology-Factor of production-Industry” driving the tourism industry from pursuing quantity growth to focusing on value enhancement. This paper systematically examines the evolutionary logic of new quality productive forces that empower the tourism industry’s upgrading process. Based on Schumpeter’s innovation theory framework, it elucidates the connotative characteristics and collaborative innovation mechanisms of high-quality tourism development, and conducts a case study using the Impression·Sanjie LIU live performance as a typical example to deconstruct the“Technology-Factor of production-Industry”collaborative innovation ecosystem of new quality productive forces driving high-quality tourism development. The research findings reveal the following: technological innovation achieves Pareto improvement of factors of production through digital empowerment, effectively reducing marginal costs and expanding economies of scale, thereby generating factor rents as a new value form; the optimization and allocation of factors of production trigger structural transformations in industrial organization, creating structural dividend effects and releasing industrial upgrading potential; industrial innovation forms Schumpeterian innovation effects through vertical value chain extension and horizontal format integration, breaking traditional market equilibrium and path dependence, to construct new patterns of monopolistic competition in industrial development. This ultimately forms a closed-loop system of“Technology-Factor of production-Industry”collaborative innovation for high-quality tourism development.

Sports parks are key sports and leisure service facilities based on urban green space systems that play a pivotal role in enhancing the physical activity levels of individuals. This article scrutinizes the literature pertaining to sports parks within the Web of Science journal database, analyzing its research context, scholarly characteristics, scientific issues, and research trends by adopting analytical perspectives that consider the effects of sports parks, human-environment relationships, and other pertinent aspects. Additionally, it examines topics such as sports park planning and construction to provide theoretical and practical directions for high-quality research aimed at advancing the development of sports parks in the future.

Just as the senses are core tools in a human body’s ability to collect information, the tourist sensory experience plays an integral part of the tourist experience. The tourist sensory experience is formed by receiving stimuli from sensory organs and translating it into vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Although research on tourist sensory experiences has made some progress, there remains a lack of systematic discussion and outlook on this topic. So as to define the relevant concepts relating to a tourist’s sensory experience, this study systematically reviews the prevailing body of research in reference to the situation, content, and mechanism behind tourist sensory experiences. This study then proposes future research themes, including the refinement of the concept and measurement content, the exploration of the intrinsic formation mechanism of the tourist sensory experience, and the enrichment of sensory experiences of different tourism phases, multiple destinations, and differentiated tourist types, with the aim of enriching and enhancing the depth and breadth of the research on tourist sensory experiences.

The development of the sharing economy has given birth to a new form of experience economy called shared accommodation, which benefits from many innovations in its ability to shape “unforgettable experiences” for tourists. However, it is unclear how tourists form unforgettable experiences based on individual interactions in shared accommodation scenarios. Based on the comprehensive experience paradigm, this study systematically explores the influence mechanism of the features of shared accommodation on the tourist experience through grounded theory and further refines the formation path of tourists’ unforgettable experiences. The results show that tourists form unforgettable experiences in shared accommodation scenarios through three experiential paths: functional, emotional, and symbolic, and which correspond to the physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions, respectively. Simultaneously, four major factors influenced the occurrence of unforgettable experiences: infrastructure functions, service experiences, interpersonal interactions, and novel experiences. These results provide a reference for the sharing economy industry to optimize “experience-based” products and services.

Tourism flow is one of the main focuses of tourism research. The application of big data technology to tourism flow research is gradually becoming a trend. This study aims to understand the state-of-the-art tourism flow research from the perspective of big data application. We selected articles published in international academic journals as the research objects, summarized the research progress in relevant fields, and proposed research prospects. The analysis indicates that (1) since 2013, research on tourism flow, from the perspective of big data application, has shown a rapid development trend. Relevant research involves tourism, management, economy, information technology, and other fields with a development trend of diversified achievements. (2) based on keyword co-occurrence network analysis, it was divided into five condensed subsets. In terms of research themes, we found that achievements mainly focused on the measurement and characterization of tourism flow, the spatiotemporal pattern and effects of tourism flow, influencing factors, and prediction of tourism flow. In terms of application data, user-generated equipment and management data were the main data sources for analysis. The main methods included spatial statistics and analysis, network analysis, model construction, and interactive integration of different research methods. (3) existing research results show an imbalance in terms of themes, data, and methods. In the future, it is urgent to continue to explore and deepen the expansion of research themes, the fusion of big and small data, and the integration of multidisciplinary methods.

The key to rural revitalization lies in vitalizing rural industries. The development of the rural tourism industry - under the requirement for green, low-carbon and sustainable growth - is an important path for rural revitalization. To achieve high-quality development of rural tourism, it is necessary to follow the triple logic of system, reality and practice, with the overall aim being to achieve a “green and low-carbon ecological foundation, innovation-driven intelligent transformation, cultural empowerment of spiritual inheritance, and industrial optimization of integrated development.” The bottleneck of rural tourism’s development is that it is difficult for industrial factors to flow to, and gather in, the rural areas. The key to success lies in re-understanding the contemporary rural regions and re-constructing the local comprehensive entities, starting from tourism factor clustering, specialty of development, effective utilization of resources, green development, scientific and technological empowerment, institutional innovation, personnel training, and reconstruction of local comprehensive entities. Indeed, the purpose of this is to be able to forge a new combination of rural tourism development factors, create rural tourism products with unique features and vitality, and promote the high-quality development of the rural tourism industry.

Monitoring customers to ensure they finish their meals (“clean plate campaign”) in catering enterprises is a significant measure to prevent food waste. However, this practice may provoke negative responses from customers. With the rise of intelligent dining services, service robots are becoming more prevalent. There is limited research examining whether using service robots can mitigate the adverse effects of monitoring customers’ plate waste in buffet settings. To address this gap, the present study employs the theory of mind perception to investigate how buffet customers respond to varying intensities of plate waste monitoring conducted by service robots compared to human waitstaff. A pilot study and scenario-based experiment reveal the following key findings: 1. Compared to low monitoring intensity, high monitoring intensity increases negative customer responses, specifically manifested as more negative customer attitudes and a higher willingness to engage in negative word-of-mouth behavior. 2. Service provider type interacts with monitoring intensity: when plate waste monitoring is low, service robots reduce negative customer responses compared to human waitstaff; however, with increased monitoring intensity, the ability of service robots to mitigate negative customer responses diminishes. 3. Perceived restrictiveness mediates the interactive effects of service provider type and monitoring intensity on customer responses.

In conclusion, this study enriches theoretical research by revealing the novel role of service robots in influencing customers to reduce plate waste. Furthermore, it offers practical insights for catering enterprises aiming to optimize their plate waste monitoring strategies.

Karst tourism practice is crucial for the economic and social development of karst regions, necessitating systematic academic research for scientific guidance. Consequently, reviewing and forecasting karst tourism research is imperative. Currently, there is a scarcity of literature summarizing knowledge and reflecting on issues within the domestic karst tourism research system. This article reviews and summarizes representative literature on domestic karst tourism since 1985. It systematically examines research topics and methods in this field, identifies research gaps, constructs a research framework, and proposes future research directions. The study findings are as follows. 1. Domestic karst tourism research has evolved through an embryonic stage (1985-1996), a development stage (1997-2009), and a stable stage (2010-present). 2. Research topics include the basic connotation, development, and utilization of karst tourism resources, the brand image of karst tourism destinations, karst rural tourism, poverty alleviation and development, and the impact and sustainable development of karst tourism. 3. Research methods encompass both qualitative and quantitative analyses, with relatively rich qualitative research findings. 4. Academic attention to karst tourism fluctuates, often with low research quality and lacking a systematic approach. 5. Future research should strengthen foundational, empirical, and contemporary studies of karst tourism.

The rapid proliferation of immersive tourism performance has outpaced academic research, which has created a disparity between development in practice and scholarly investigations. Notably, characterized by interactivity and participation, immersive tourism performance hinges primarily on visitors’ embodied experiences within the local context, and further exploration of specific dimensions of immersive tourism performance is warranted. Guided by embodiment theory, we construct an experience quality evaluation of such performance based on tourists’ body, cognition, and situational factors. We further adopt content analysis and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to comprehensively evaluate immersive tourism performance, considering network evaluation as the analytic text. Our study derives the following findings: (1) The experience quality evaluation system of immersive tourism performance is constructed from four dimensions, with particular emphasis on the role of “body” factors in tourism experience, to accurately and comprehensively measure the quality of immersive tourism performance experience. (2) The quality of tourism experience is relatively satisfactory. Tourists have a good evaluation of embodied participation and experience situational dimensions, while the evaluation of product cognition and service cognition is at a general level. (3) Tourists obtain flow and meaning experiences in product cognition, and the generation of meaning experience can bring more lasting satisfaction, while performance rhythm plays a catalytic role. The service cognition indicators are rated low, which suggests that the various services provided by immersive tourism performance to tourists are not ideal. Physical participation includes the multi-sensory experience of using the body passively, with vision as the dominant factor, and the somatosensory experience of using the body actively, with kinesthetics as the dominant factor. The latter facilitates easier stimulation of tourists to exert their subjective initiative; it extends the experience situation and adds social situation elements based on previous research. (4) IPA reveals that the performance team, sense of substitution, sensory experience, and other elements are its advantages, which must be maintained in the future. The performance rhythm, atmosphere of fellow tourists, service guidance, and other elements fall into the opportunity area, which should be further developed and improved. The performance content factors fall into the key improvement area, and the immersive tourism performance project must take effective measures immediately. The study broadens the research perspective of tourism experience quality, enriches embodied experience research context, and presents recommendations for upgrading the quality and competitiveness of immersive tourism performance.

Research on the structural characteristics and factors influencing tourism flow networks in cities along the Canal is of great significance to the development of canal tourism. This study extracts flow information from the online travelogues of tourists in 39 cities along the Canal to construct the tourism flow network. The social network analysis method (SNA) and exponential random graph model (ERGM) are used to analyze the structural characteristics of tourism flow networks, along with the common influences of different factors on the tourism flow network of cities along the Canal. By exploring the deep influence mechanism of the structural characteristics of tourism flow networks in Canal cities, we found that such networks result from a combination of factors. The results show that (1) tourism attraction leads to differences in the distribution of tourism flow frequency in cities along the Canal in the Yangtze River Delta region; (2) the capacity of tourism flow distribution is jointly affected by the level of economic development, urban accessibility, urban environmental quality, and urban tourism attractiveness; (3) the non-substitutability of core transit cities mainly stems from urban accessibility; and (4) the level of economic development is an important influencing factor in the formation of core-periphery structural characteristics. It is hoped that this paper will provide insights for the planning, management, and sustainable development of tourist flows in cities along the Canal.

Tourism, a typical representation of the green economy and quality services, is an effective way to improve the efficiency of the urban green economy. This study selected 279 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019 and used the GMM to empirically test the impact of tourism development on urban green economic efficiency based on the green economic efficiency of each city, measured using the EBM model. The results show that tourism development generally contributes to the improvement of urban green economic efficiency, and that this process presents an inverted U-shaped relationship. The heterogeneity of regions and the tourism economy scale show that the inverted U-shaped relationship only occurs in the east and west, and regions with a low tourism economy scales. Further research found that industrial structure upgraded and technological innovation strengthened the improvement effect of tourism development on green economic efficiency and played a significant positive regulatory role. This study provides an important practical basis for tourism development to improve the urban green economic efficiency.

China’s hotel industry has accumulated valuable experience by introducing advanced management methods from Western countries. However, owing to the overemphasis on the single instrumental role of the economic exchange relationship, kinship management in traditional Chinese culture has received insufficient attention. Based on the theory of kinship-like exchange relationships and the perspective of kinship management, this study considers the Blue Water Bay Resort as a case study and analyzes the impact of KM on the stability mechanism of hotel staff through in-depth interviews and text analysis. The conclusions of this study are as follows: (1) KM is a management model featuring a kinship-like exchange relationship and humanized system. Idiosyncratic organizational culture plays an important role in promoting the construction of KM; (2) KM acts on emotional commitment through emotional management, promoting organizational commitment and influencing the formation of staff stability mechanisms; (3) the kinship-like exchange relationship enhances the undertaking of corporate social ethics and responsibilities; and (4) the influence of KM on the emotional commitment of staff members can be diversified, multilayered, and interactive. By surpassing the instrumentality of the economic exchange relationship, KM can improve the emotional factors of the staff towards the hotel and shed light on the stability of hotel staff and the sustainable development of the hotel.

In the era of “traffic is king,” place-making through social media has become a key approach for constructing destination images and widely disseminating the significance of places. They also influence tourists’ embodied practices and emotional experiences. To explore tourists’ emotional experiences in the context of social media place-making, this study considered the popular city of Zibo as a typical case. Using the grounded theory methodology, this study reveals the mechanism behind the generation of tourists’ emotional experiences in the context of social media place-making. These findings indicate that social media place-making is the process of constructing a distinctive place identity using social media platforms. The media catalyzes tourists’ emotional experiences through the process of “media gaze-media pilgrimage-emotional response.” Through “media gaze,” tourists receive place images shaped by other stakeholders and engage in discussions on social media, which guides their imagination and expectations of the destination, thereby stimulating their motivation for media pilgrimage. Onsite, tourists perceive the physical and humanistic spaces of a destination based on media-constructed symbols and their own experiences, reinforcing the interpretation of local meanings and strengthening their connections with the destination. Through this interactive process, tourists enhance their engagement and understanding of a place, thereby elevating their physical and emotional connections with the destination. This study highlights the significant role of social media in place-making, providing a typical case for constructing and inheriting local meanings in popular social media-driven tourist destinations. This study also deepens the theoretical exploration of tourist experiences at popular destinations shaped by social media.

Destinations generally face the important practical task of image construction and image renewal in their transformation and development, but the academic community lacks in-depth knowledge of the dynamic evolution law of their image dynamic evolution. In this context, this study takes Emeishan City as an example, based on web texts from 2011 to 2021, by diachronic dynamic analysis and multi-dimensional comparative analysis are made on the lexical expression and internal structure of the projected and perceived images, the dynamic evolution characteristics of tourist destination images are deeply discussed. This study found that: the differences in the ‘projected-perceived’ image of tourist destinations objectively exist, but converge over time; the core image of tourist destinations is highly stable, while the peripheral image is unstable; and the dynamic evolution of the image of tourist destinations is driven by a complex bidirectional role of official government and tourists. This study extends and deepens research on the dynamic evolution of the image of tourist destinations, and can provide methodological guidance for the construction and renewal of the image of tourist destinations.

Music can guide audiences on a journey, with urban folk songs enabling them to“walk into”a tourist destination, travelling through musical time and space. However, the internal psychological processes require in-depth interpretation. Based on the theory of tourism encounters, this study employs the concept of mental time travel and applies proceduralized grounded theory to analyze music reviews of the song Chengdu on the NetEase Cloud Music platform across three levels. This analysis constructs a process model of mental time travel between audiences and urban folk songs. 1. Urban folk songs work like a“triggers”for mental time travel; the present functions as the“anchor point,”while memory and self-act as the“machines,”allowing audiences to traverse subjective time, encompassing both the past and future. 2. The audience’s body is an“emotional interleaving field,”with accumulated subjective emotions acting as the “lubricant” for the mental time travel “machine.” This process facilitates the audience’s journey within the musical time-space travel, enabling them to “enter” the tourist destination across time and space.

This research innovatively integrates the theory of tourism encounters with the concept of mental time travel to reveal the internal psychological process of the musical time-space journey experienced by listeners of urban folk songs. Additionally, it offers practical insights for tourism destination marketing organizations.

The essence of tourism is the most fundamental issue in tourism research and plays a crucial role in the discipline of tourism studies. However, academics have not reached a consensus on the nature of tourism, which has a restrictive impact on the definition of the concept of tourism and even on the independence of disciplinary development. Based on the literature review on the nature of tourism, this study discusses and speculates several controversial issues related to the nature of tourism in academic circles. Using multiple perspectives and academic definitions, this study puts forward the concept of “tourism is the experience of physical and mental freedom in places other than daily life, study, and work environments (namely, the non-customary environment) with leisure as the main purpose,” and holds that the essence of tourism is the experience of physical and mental freedom in a non-customary environment. The conclusion of this study is helpful for deepening the understanding of and reflecting on the key issues of tourism research, and is expected to provide a reference for the construction of the tourism discipline and for the healthy and sustainable development of tourism.

The practice of Marxist productivity theory in China is deeply reflected in the concept and connotation of new quality productive forces, which have facilitated the high-quality growth of China’s cultural tourism by providing it with robust driving forces and support and presenting fundamental guidelines for the creation of a credible, admirable, and respectable image of China while developing a cultural tourism powerhouse with global competitiveness. To this end, the incorporation of new quality productive forces into cultural tourism should be manifested through the integration of advanced technology, high efficiency, high quality, green mindset, and low-carbon advocacy, which aligns with the quality expectations set by the new development philosophy for the productive forces of an advanced cultural tourism industry. In light of this, this study proposes fundamental philosophies and principles for developing the new quality productivity of cultural tourism and summarizes a fitting development framework based on strategic emerging industries, high-tech (service) industries, and future industries before proposing a feasible implementation pathway using relevant theories, factors, talents, data, and equipment as guidelines. In conclusion, through these theoretical explorations and pathway contemplations, this study contributes to accelerating the formation of new quality productivity for the cultural tourism industry.

Post-rurality is a core feature of rural tourism, and a correct understanding of the transformation of rural character in a post-modern context depends on whether rural tourism can realize high-quality development. Based on the concepts of rurality and post-rurality, this study constructs a post-rurality evaluation index system (post-rurality index). It considers Shuangquan Village, Huanghuagou Village, and Yulin Village as case studies. The entropy weighting method was used to calculate the weights of the dimensions and indicators to validate the post-rurality index. The study found that: (1) The index system of post rurality includes 6 dimensions, such as “new immigrants” and “re-localization” of villages, as well as 19 indexes, including floating population, tourism employment, tourists’ satisfaction, etc. (2) The calculation results show that each dimension has a different degree of influence on the post-rurality index, among which the “re-localization” of villages has the greatest influence on the post-rurality index of rural tourism, followed by the three dimensions of residence to habitat, community participation to community creation, and cultural urbanization; the latter has the least influence on the index. (3) From the calculation results of the post-rurality index of the three case sites, Shuangquan Village has the strongest post-rurality, followed by Huanghuagou Village; Yulin Village has the weakest. The construction of a post-ruralism index is of great theoretical and practical significance for measuring the degree of rural tourism development.

As a core element of the tourism industry chain, research on tourism attractions holds significant academic and practical value. This study employs CiteSpace visualization software to analyze journal articles related to tourism attractions in the CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) database, generating a knowledge map of this research field. The findings reveal the following: (1) Author-level Analysis: High-output author groups have not yet formed; research topics exhibit diversification, but collaboration among authors remains limited, with a shortage of core research teams. (2) Institutional Perspective: Research institutions are predominantly concentrated in East and North China, with geographical and academic lineage factors playing significant roles. Institutional research capacities vary widely. (3) Development Phases: The evolution of research on tourism attractions can be categorized into four stages: initiation, activity, expansion, and adjustment. (4) Thematic Focus: Research themes primarily revolve around resources and development, economics and management, and technology and strategy. Finally, the study offers forward-looking perspectives on the future directions of tourism attraction research, emphasizing three dimensions: research methods, collaborative networks, and content development.

In recent years, the concept of tourism-embodied experiences has become a prominent area in the field of tourism research. However, there is a paucity of investigations into the phenomenon of tourism-embodied experiences in the context of sporting events. Tourism experiences associated with sports events exhibit comprehensive attributes of both sports and event tourism. However, the specific characteristics and composition of this experience remain unclear. This study approaches the Guangzhou Marathon as a case study to investigate the tourism experience of participants in participatory sports events from an embodied perspective. It employs a combination of textual materials, including interviews, online social media data, diaries, and other textual materials, to adopt thematic analysis coding and combine it with IPA analysis. This approach was used to explore the characteristics and internal factors of embodied experiences during participatory sporting events. The findings revealed that the tourism-embodied experience in participatory sports events adheres to the mechanism framework of “participants’ body-event context-atmosphere interaction”. The degree of embodied participation in the event exhibited a trajectory from low to high and subsequently declined. Embodied experiences, emotional experiences, urban space cognition, and event feedback constitute tourists’ embodied experiences. In the actual perception process of tourists, event perception and positive emotions were rated highly, whereas negative problems arising from the embodied experience highlighted areas for future improvement. This study contributes to the expansion of the tourism experience. Sports event organizers should create a favorable event context for participants, develop attractive and competitive events, and promote the active participation of tourists.

Tourism is booming with rapid economic development and the continuous pursuit of spiritual fulfillment. All-for-one tourism is currently a popular research topic in the tourism industry and is the core driving force of local economic development. This study used the CiteSpace software to visualize the number of publications, research authors, research institutions, journal sources, and research hotspots of China’s all-for-one tourism research from 2011 to 2024 to predict the future trends of China’s all-for-one tourism research. The results show that: ① Over the past 14 years, China’s research on all-for-one tourism has experienced three stages: slow germination, initial exploration, and vigorous growth, with increasing attention in recent years; ② China’s all-for-one tourism research hotspots are concentrated on the connotation of the analysis, the impact and effect of the development of countermeasures, etc. Although some academic progress has been achieved, the theoretical core and system still need improvement; ③ In the future, China’s all-for-one tourism research will mainly focus on rural tourism, cultural and tourism integration, and propose countermeasures for the development of all-for-one tourism from these perspectives to provide certain references and support for China’s rural revitalization and high-quality tourism development.

The rapid development of rural homestays in China’s post-modernization economic and social transformation has become an important starting point for promoting rural revitalization and urban-rural integration. Its development prospects are broad, but there are problems such as investment generalization and over-commercialization at this stage, and scientific guidance is urgently required to achieve high-quality development. By clarifying the supply and demand characteristics of rural homestays in China, this study explores the main path to guide rural homestays to achieve high-quality development from two perspectives of “single homestay production and operation-destination response after homestay gathering.” It is suggested that rural homestays should adhere to the suitability choice of production scale, the multi-dimensional “rural” choice of characteristic production, the life choice of management service, the “standardization”choice of “non-standard” production, and the sharing choice of community element after the development of industrial agglomeration. Simultaneously, it is necessary to explore the construction of a “four-level and five-dimension” social effect evaluation system for the high-quality development of rural homestays, including the improvement of human capital quality, the resilience of the social ecosystem, the realization of community common prosperity, the construction of new social cooperation networks, and the stimulation of community belonging, to expand and refine the “human-land-industry-governance” logical framework. This study has guiding value for realizing multiple social benefits, such as harmonious coexistence and coordinated development of the homestay industry and rural tourism community.

With the rapid development of tourism, tourists have prioritized their internal emotional experiences. The relationship between tourism involvement and place attachment has become an important issue in the development of local tourism as it is an important indicator for analyzing and predicting tourists’needs. Therefore, it has been widely studied by the tourism industry and academia. This study takes Changsha City as an example and introduces tourists’perceived value as an intermediary variable based on the city’s tourism situation and relevant achievements. Additionally, it discusses the relationship between tourism involvement and place attachment. Studying the mechanism of tourist attachment and its promotion strategy is of great significance for sustainable destination development. The results show that: (1) The three dimensions of involvement significantly affect perceived value and place dependence, self-expression/centrality significantly affects place identity, and perceived value significantly affects place dependence and place identity. (2) Perceived value plays an important mediating role in the formation of tourists’place attachment. Perceived value partially mediates the relationship between attraction/self-presentation/centrality, place dependence and place identity. It is also a complete mediator between attraction and place identity. (3) Tourism involvement and perceived value are important drivers of place attachment.

Digital transformation in the cultural and tourism industry is of great significance for driving the growth of a modern industrial system, accelerating the construction of a new development pattern, and achieving high-quality economic development. Considering the conceptual connotation and essential characteristics of digital transformation in the cultural and tourism industry, in this article, the internal logic of digital transformation in the cultural and tourism industry is analyzed. It clarifies that the essential characteristics of digital transformation in the cultural and tourism industry are reflected in the innovative development of cultural and tourism resources driven by data elements, the immersive innovation of digital technologies embedded in cultural and tourism products, and the intelligent construction of cultural and tourism formats supported by digital platforms. The historical logic of digital transformation in the cultural and tourism industry is outlined in the evolution from the nascent to development to the acceleration stages. Based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) theoretical framework of “digital technologies as the foundation, industrial organization as the main body, and development environment as the guarantee,” the theoretical logic of digital transformation in the cultural and tourism industry is clarified. Further, the comprehensive promotion of the Chinese path to modernization highlights the advantages of digital economy development, and the growing need for a better life demonstrates the practical logic of digital transformation in the cultural and tourism industry. Finally, through theoretical thinking and path references, the article proposes directions for accelerating digital transformation in the cultural and tourism industry through enhancing the fundamental role of digital technologies, strengthening the main role of industrial organizations, and optimizing the guarantee role of the development environment.

Culture-tourism integration policies are crucial for promoting the prosperity and development of China’s culture-tourism industry. By quantitatively evaluating such policies, this study offers valuable references for formulating future culture-tourism integration policies. This research selects 87 culture-tourism integration policy texts issued by various levels of government in China, and constructs a two-dimensional analytical framework: policy tools (X) and policy objectives (Y). Using NVivo 11 software, the study conducts a systematic quantitative evaluation and analysis of the textual content of these policies. The findings show that from the policy tools dimension, there is clear imbalance in the government’s use of policy tools. Learning tools, capacity tools, and incentive tools are used more frequently, while symbolic and hortatory tools and authority tools are used relatively less frequently. From the policy objectives dimension, the goals set for promoting culture-tourism integration are relatively balanced. However, some regional policies lack sufficient targeting and local characteristics. To address this, local culture-tourism departments should optimize policy supply by adjusting the allocation of policy tools, enhancing policy matching, coordination, and targeting. They should also emphasize the exploration and promotion of local culture, highlight regional uniqueness, and develop more targeted and distinctive policy measures.

Promoting the high-quality development of rural tourism is a crucial path to fully realizing the rural revitalization strategy. Based on New Endogenous Development Theory, this paper constructs a theoretical model for the multidimensional high-quality development of rural tourism from the perspective of multi-actor collaboration and internal-external linkages. A quantitative empirical study is conducted based on survey data from 16 villages in 8 cities in Zhejiang Province (N=1,126). Using structural equation modeling with SmartPLS 4.0 software, the study finds: (1) The operation of tourism enterprises, local community involvement, and government policy support all have a significant positive impact on the economic, social, ecological, and cultural dimensions of high-quality rural tourism development. (2) Rural operational mechanisms drive local community participation, jointly promoting the high-quality development of rural tourism. (3) Government policy support effectively promotes internal community involvement and the operational engagement of tourism companies in rural areas. This paper provides a theoretical basis and practical reference for the policy design and innovative practices of high-quality rural tourism development.

Against the background of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change, a complex domestic and overseas environment, and the transformation of China’s economic development mode, General Secretary Xi Jinping creatively puts forward the concept of “new quality productivity,” which points out the way forward for tourism development and provides a fundamental guideline. This study summarizes the difficulties and directions for new quality productivity in tourism. First, it proposes that new quality productivity is an inherent requirement for the deepening of tourism development and expounds on the important role that scientific and technological innovation plays in it. Second, it proposes a two-way influence mechanism for the development of new quality productivity of tourism from the two dimensions of the overall driving power of tourism and its huge market demand. Third, it elaborates on the role of science and technology in the new quality productivity of tourism from both positive and negative perspectives. Finally, we highlight six major difficulties in developing new quality productivity in the tourism industry: data quality, human capital, means of production, industrial ecology, financial support, and production relations.

The integration of culture and tourism industries is an inevitable requirement for the high-quality development of China’s tourism industry, and it is also inherently essential to compensate for the weaknesses of tourism development and promote its transformation and upgrading. This study uses the coupling coordination model to assess the development level of cultural and tourism integration in 30 provinces (cities) in China from 2010 to 2019, and then introduces the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method to explore the development path of cultural and tourism integration in China based on the driving conditions of demand, supply, and support. The results reveal the following: (1) The overall development level of China’s cultural tourism industry has improved in the 2010-2019 period, but great regional heterogeneity exists in different regions. (2) From the perspective of the overall development path of culture and tourism in China, demand and support are important conditions, whereas residents’ consumption power and regional transportation play a particularly prominent role. (3) Significant differences exist in the development paths of the eastern, central, and western regions. The development of the eastern region is predominantly driven by demand combined with support, whereas the development of the central region is boosted by support and demand separately; meanwhile, the development of the western region is driven by both demand and demand-support. The results indicate that local governments should pay attention to synergizing the multiple conditions of supply, demand, and support; effectively adjust the strategy for cultural tourism development considering local conditions; and improve the targeted core driving capacity to break the bottlenecks of the development.

Qualitative research methods, represented by grounded theory and case study, are becoming increasingly common in tourism management and business administration research. However, there are still numerous controversies over and uncertainty regarding the essential characteristics, evaluation criteria, and key steps in the process of applying them. This study analyzes how to effectively utilize the grounded theory and case study method and arrives at the following conclusions: (1) The primary characteristics of high-quality qualitative and case study methods are as follows: The research design has high credibility and reliability; the selection of samples and cases should match the research question and research paradigm; the data analysis process should be rigorous and standardized; the theoretical construction should be based on the balance point of “optimal distinction;” and attention should be paid to the uniqueness of the research method when writing essays. (2) Deep reflection is needed among academics on the connotation of grounded theory, while avoiding four typical misunderstandings, and relevant strategies and suggestions for core issues, such as theoretical sampling, coding skills, and reliability and validity testing, should be propounded. (3) Increasing attention has been paid to the standardization of the data analysis of grounded theory, especially to the description and display of the coding process in the essays. However, noteworthily, coding is not performed for the sake of coding itself, and only “continuous comparison” and reasonable interpretation form the core of data analysis. (4) The case study’s data analysis and theoretical construction constitute the logical chain of “data-concept-concept relationships theory,” which includes the following two stages: The first stage proceeds from data to concept—that is, the case data are compressed and abstracted to be associated with the relevant concept. The second stage entails the conceptual relationships and their theoretical explanation—that is, logically linking these concepts, describing the pattern of case phenomena, and explaining their underlying mechanisms. (5) Case studies are conducive to revealing theoretical mechanisms and constructing new theories, and the quality of case studies can be effectively enhanced by selecting matching data processing methods. Per the different types of theories, case studies can be divided into both process and factor theories, which are suitable for different research designs and data processing methods.

The digital economy has increasingly become an important driving force of high-quality development, and understanding the internal laws that empower high-quality development in the tourism industry is of great significance. Based on the empowerment theory of the digital economy, this study constructed a dynamic analytical framework for the relationship between digital economy and high-quality tourism development and established a PSTR model using provincial panel data to explore the enabling effect and mechanism of the digital economy on the high-quality development of tourism. The results show that (1) the empowering effect of the digital economy on high-quality tourism development has dynamic nonlinear characteristics and has passed the robustness test of various methods. (2) The digital economy has the transmission effect of empowering high-quality tourism development through the efficiency and structure of the tourism industry. (3) The enabling effect of the digital economy on high-quality tourism development is regionally heterogeneous, and the empowerment effect is weaker in regions with higher economic development levels. This study enriches the theory of digital economy empowerment, providing policy suggestions for high-quality tourism development in the digital era.

Rural tourism plays a guiding role in promoting rural revitalization and achieving common prosperity, and it is also an important way to promote the modernization of Chinese agriculture and rural areas. After more than 30 years, the research on rural tourism in China has achieved fruitful research results, with the research content showing a trend of “a hundred flowers blooming and a hundred schools of thought contending”. However, localised theoretical innovation and insights into theoretical research are still lacking. The regional system of the relationship between scholars and places in local geography provides an important basis for the perspective of rural problems, and the rural human-land-industry element system has become an important perspective in rural research and has been widely used. However, as a complex multisystem, rural governance is an unavoidable problem in promoting rural modernization and building a well-off society. Based on this, this study constructs a theoretical framework of “human-land-industry-governance” on the basis of the human-land-industry framework. It holds that population is the key factor in the development of rural tourism destinations, and industry is the core of the development of rural tourism destinations. Land is the basic guarantee factor for the development of the rural tourism industry and the entrepreneurship of talent officers, and the governance of rural tourism sites plays the role of regulator. The coordinated development of the four factors can further promote the optimization of the land-land relationship in rural tourism, and the integration of the theoretical framework can better promote the theoretical research and practical progress of rural tourism in the future. Against the background of this article being written on the land of the motherland, the study of rural tourism localization should pay attention to the following three problems: first, it should emphasize people-orientation and pay attention to the subjectivity of individuals in rural tourism; second, it should pay attention to the flow of urban and rural populations and explore the new endogenous development model of rural tourism destinations; third, it should build a good governance system in rural areas, focusing on the common prosperity of rural tourism destinations.

Standardization serves as a crucial instrument for enhancing total factor productivity and driving high-quality development. Using the staggered implementation of tourism standardization pilot programs as a quasi-natural experiment, this study employs the DEA-Malmquist index to measure tourism total factor productivity across 240 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019. A multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model is then applied to assess the impact of these standardization initiatives on tourism total factor productivity. The results demonstrate that tourism standardization significantly improves total factor productivity within the tourism sector, primarily through technological advancements. The robustness of these findings is validated using propensity score matching DID (PSM-DID), synthetic DID, and placebo tests. Further analysis reveals an inverted U-shaped moderating effect of entrepreneurial activity on the relationship between tourism standardization and total factor productivity. Moreover, the positive effects of standardization are amplified in cities with underdeveloped economies, limited tourism resources, and weak market credit. This study provides novel empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of tourism standardization in enhancing both quality and efficiency within the tourism industry.

This paper outlines the characteristics of mass tourism and national tourism at various stages of development in China and the West. It examines tourism consumption behavior and phenomena in unusual environments, explained through Say’s Law, prospect theory from behavioral economics, and mental accounting. From this analysis, the paper offers five inferences and nine trend predictions.

The role of tourism as a catalyst for urban-rural integration has received considerable attention, but philosophical and value-based discussions in academia are lacking. At a time when tourism is more often presented as a commercialised form of existence, it is necessary to address the practical issues dominated by development discourse and reflect on the production of knowledge. This article takes a philosophical perspective on tourism, explaining the two ontologies of tourism as “tourism as commercialization” and “tourism as poetic dwelling”, further extending the author’s previous theoretical framework of “urban-rural circular restoration”. The author’s theoretical framework of “urban-rural circular restoration” is extended. In the ethical dimension of “goodness”, tourism development brings about the cultivation of subjectivity in the countryside and the restoration of alienation in the city; in the aesthetic dimension of “beauty”, tourism development brings about the cultural self-reliance of the countryside and the aesthetic liberation of the city. This article explores the process of urban-rural alienation to self-reliance in the context of tourism development and offers a philosophical consideration of the “comprehensive promotion of rural revitalization” proposed by the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.