Observing, classifying, and describing tourists, tourism activities, and tourism producers are the basic activities required for researchers to understand tourism. Tourism academics should adhere to practical problem-solving approaches, select the various practical problems of the tourism industry as topics for investigation and research, and construct theories within the context of national conditions and practices. Academics and young scholars should devote themselves to research that can solve practical problems in contemporary tourism development.

This paper untangles the various perspectives and academic issues regarding tourism research. It mainly focuses on three topics: the nature and practical significance of tourism, modes of thinking in response to the changing trends in tourism demand, and issues that need attention for the deepening of tourism research. This paper explores the nature of tourism from the perspective of necessity and spatial-temporality, classifying the types of tourism experiences based on multiple dimensions. Moreover, it suggests that four modes of thinking, including scenario thinking and platform thinking, are required in response to changes in tourism demand. Finally, it proposes that in the promotion of tourism research, close attention should be paid to the two core issues of “adopting a problem-solving approach in academic research” and “adhering to academic ethics in data selection”.

Amenities and scenes are the products of specific times and have an intrinsic relation with mainstream values. With the change in social values, the understanding of amenities is also changing and being replaced with new ideas. To dissect social dynamics and the process of value formation, this paper deconstructs the generative characteristics of amenities as a form of culture, analyzing the trends of returning to natural amenities, prevalence of consumer amenities, and scenes and amenities in the post-industrial age as amenities transform in response to changing demand. The primary aim of this paper is to provide insights and advice for the development of scenes and national amenities in the Chinese context. The upcoming post-industrial era will witness the joint efforts of planners, designers, and creative workers in their endeavor to inject cultural creativity and artistic aesthetics into people’s daily lives. Creating scenes and amenities should not be limited merely to the construction of a combination of infrastructures, and elements such as aesthetics and culture should also be incorporated, with importance being attached to aesthetics as a part of human integrity.

Urban-rural differences have long been an important research topic but most of the existing literature has focused on the economic aspects, failing to explore the differences in the quality of life between urban and rural residents. Based on annual data from the China General Social Survey and using a latent class modeling approach to build a mixed regression model, this paper explores the differences in and influencing factors of the leisure lifestyles of Chinese urban and rural residents. The findings show that (1) the leisure lifestyles of urban and rural residents are remarkably different, with urban residents participating in leisure activities much more frequently than rural residents as a whole; (2) the differences in the types of leisure participation between urban and rural residents are obvious, with urban residents participating more frequently in leisure activities that help promote personal growth and rural residents being less likely to be involved in high-quality leisure activities; (3) public factors such as public education, health care, and social security and individual factors such as age, health, and education level are the main factors leading to the differences in leisure lifestyles between urban and rural residents. The findings of this study are conducive to narrowing down urban-rural differences, balancing the sense of happiness and gain of urban and rural residents, and providing empirical evidence for research on urban-rural differences in the leisure lifestyles of Chinese residents.

The application of actor-network theory (ANT) in tourism research has been broadened. It reveals, through a unique methodological paradigm, the operational mode of an inter-relational network of key elements such as the environment, tourists, and tourism products. Taking 70 relevant papers on ANT published between 2000 and 2021 from the SSCI and CSSCI databases as samples, this paper conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) to summarize ANT in the field of tourism research based on five aspects: the number of published papers and publication distribution, types of papers, data acquisition methods, application of ANT in different tourism research topics, and differences between Chinese and English papers. The results show that the number of published papers follows a phased upward trend; the type of papers is mainly qualitative; and the main data acquisition methods comprise case studies, field investigations, and second-hand data. The research mainly focuses on theory and research development, heritage and environmental issues, tourism product development and planning, and rural tourism, as well as the differences in research foci and the application of ANT between Chinese and English literature. Based on a complete understanding of the application status of ANT in tourism research, this paper puts forward suggestions for future development, which can act as a reference and inspiration for follow-up research.