Tao Li

Tourism-driven villages in metropolitan suburbs have become crucial spaces for the interaction of urban and rural factors; however, the spatiotemporal patterns and underlying mechanisms of land use change in such contexts remain inadequately explored. This study takes Huangshandian Village in Beijing, China, as a case study, utilizing remote sensing interpretation, ArcGIS 10.8 spatial analysis, and land use transition matrix methodology to examine tourism-driven land use change from 2008 to 2021. The findings reveal three development stages: initial development, rapid expansion, and integration and upgrading. Tourism development has greatly increased the proportion of tourism-related land, diversified land use structure, and shifted land functions from agriculture to tourism and services. Under urban–rural interaction, power-driven (local governments), resource-driven (village collectives and villagers), and capital-driven (enterprises, entrepreneurs, tourists) actors have jointly reshaped land use through the circulation and integration of key resources. This study reveals the mechanisms of tourism-driven rural land use transformation and provides theoretical and practical insights for land planning and sustainable rural tourism development in metropolitan suburban areas.

Location choice and decision-making are the basic and critical issues in economic investment. Given the rapid development of rural tourism, scientific decision-making on rural tourism investment (RTI) plays a vitally important role in local industrial efficiency and achievements. To learn the connotation of RTI and enrich our knowledge on the evolutionary characteristics of its location choice factors in destination phased development, this paper has comprehensively analysed RTI and built a location choice factor system from the perspective of the human-land relationship system based on an empirical study of Zhejiang Province in China. (1) According to human-land relationship theory, RTI is constructed by a systematic content of “investors-factors-objects”, and its location choice is related to the local industrial economy, social and cultural development, and natural environment. (2) Contributions of location choice factors present a clear decreasing trend among the industrial economy, social and cultural conditions, and natural environment to RTI decision-making in the study area, while the industrial economy gradually stands out with rural tourism destination evolution successively from the initial stage, development stage, and rapid expansion stage to the upgrading and efficiency improvement stage. (3) Evolution of RTI location choice is a process of making different investment decisions in various regional rural tourism development stages, as the rural human–land relationship system has a deep influence on RTI earning expectations and “investors-factors-objects”.

With the rise of wine consumption in China, wine tourism is becoming increasingly popular. Research shows that wine resource development is profoundly impacted by tourist perception and satisfaction. To precisely understand the process and mechanism of tourists' attitudes and preferences toward wine tourism resources in China, this paper employed a questionnaire survey to explore tourists' perceptions of local wine tourism and resources from five dimensions by analyzing feedback from wine tourists in the east foothill of the Helan Mountain Wine Region of Ningxia. The main findings are threefold. (1) As emerging experiential tourism, wine tourism has distinct demographic characteristics in terms of income, age and the methods of travel. (2) Wine tourism resources are the most important factors influencing tourist satisfaction, while functional comfort is also highlighted for its charm and value. In addition, the quality of services has a significant impact on tourists' support for wine tourism. (3) Remarkably, the findings show that the facilities condition, ecological environment and resource conservation exert little influence on tourist perception of wine tourism. However, these factors also deserve to be stressed for their important roles in establishing a positive atmosphere of wine tourism development. The results of this study have enriched our knowledge of wine tourism resource development and tourist perception.

The concept of strong sustainability suggests that natural capital is irreplaceable and emphasizes that human natural consumption cannot exceed the carrying capacity of the ecological environment. In the realistic context of tightening resource constraints and ecological degradation, how to explore the optimal economic and well-being output under certain ecological constraints has become an important topic in sustainability research. Ecological well-being performance (EWP) can comprehensively reflect the efficiency of natural resources and ecological inputs into the well-being level and has become an important tool for sustainable development research. Based on strong sustainability, this paper constructs an EWP evaluation index system. It decomposes EWP into two stages: ecological economy and economic well-being, which opens the “black box” of the ecological well-being conversion process. PCA-DEA, the network super-efficiency Epsilon-based measure (Network SEBM) model, and Geodetector are used to dynamically measure the EWP in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA) from 2010 to 2020 and analyze its spatial and temporal characteristics and influencing factors. The results show that (1) temporally, the EWP in the TGRA shows an increasing trend from 2010 to 2020, but the overall level is low. Spatially, it shows a high pattern in the east and low in the west, and spatial differences are gradually decreasing; (2) ecological economic efficiency is significantly lower than economic well-being efficiency, and ecological economic efficiency is the main reason limiting the improvement in EWP in the TGRA. The ecological well-being situation of the TGRA is not optimistic; (3) there is an overall problem of excessive ecological input and insufficient per-capita GDP and well-being output in the TGRA, and decisions should be made according to local conditions; (4) the level of economic development has an EWP level that plays a dominant role and also has a greater relationship with the policy system, socioeconomic conditions, and natural environment.

Due to the rapid urbanization and industrialization, urban agglomeration has become the area with the most drastic and concentrated land use change. The research on the evolution law and structural characteristics of urban agglomeration land use system is of great significance for the sustainable development. Taking the middle reaches of the Yangtze River urban agglomeration (MRYRUA) of China as the study area, we analyzed the phasic changes from 1980 to 2018 in land use/cover in the MRYRUA as well as the spatial differences between the three core regions. Furthermore, the transfer matrix of land use/cover change (LUCC) was converted to network, with land use types as nodes and conversion relationships between different land types as network connecting lines. Complex network indexes such as centrality, diffusion, and dominant flow were applied to identify the major changes in land use types, key change paths, and transformation patterns. The results show that: (1) in the past 40 years, the building land area in the MRYRUA has increased significantly, while the area of crop land and forest has, and still is, decreasing at an accelerated rate; (2) in terms of the scale, structure, and spatial distribution of land use transfer, there are distinct differences among the three core regions. The Wuhan metropolitan area has the largest intensity of land use transfer and the most drastic structural adjustment; (3) in all four periods, the land use transition network, crop land, and water bodies are the key land use types. Over time, the influence of building land and forest in the land use transition network has increased; and (4) the first transfer direction of each land use type was stable during different periods, such as the transfer of crop land to water bodies and building land, the transfer of water bodies to crop land, and the mutual transformations among crop land and forest, indicating a stable transfer pattern in the MRYRUA.

Litter pollution on beaches is a growing problem worldwide that threatens marine species and tourism experiences. It is important to establish a virtual geographic environment by simulating the spatiotemporal pattern of litter to enhance our understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of geographic environmental elements. This study visualized the spatiotemporal data of litter by type on a total of 1,762 UK beaches on the coastline and offshore islands from 2000 to 2016. Ten major sources of litter—including plastic/polystyrene, rubber, cloth, paper/cardboard, wood (machined), metal, glass, pottery/ceramics, and sanitary and medical items—were investigated in detail. The statistical analysis showed that the overall litter concentration was largely related to the intensity of human activity. Spatially, the hot spots were concentrated in the south, while the cold spots were mostly concentrated along the northern coast of the UK. The significance of the hot and cold spots tended to increase over time. Hot spot and cold spot distribution comparisons of 10 litter types were also conducted. Our results vividly depict the litter distribution in marine environments based on type. A deepened understanding provides clues concerning how to prevent the increasing accumulation of litter and clean litter in marine environments.

Reducing carbon emissions and transitioning to a low-carbon economy are important propositions for human sustainability. Since it is closely related with high carbon emissions, international travel makes a substantial contribution to the global carbon emissions. To comprehensively explore the influence of international travel on carbon emissions and develop a sustainable development plan, this paper studies the temporal and spatial distribution and evolution of the carbon footprint of inbound tourism in China's 30 provinces between 2007 and 2017. In this study, comprehensive calculations and spatial models are adopted to reveal the temporal and spatial characteristics. The results show that the carbon footprint of inbound tourism in China has been increasing continuously from 2007 to 2017. While the carbon footprint increased by 1.94-fold, from 5.623 million tons to 10.8809 million tons, it presented obvious fluctuations by initially increasing rapidly and then dropping slightly. From the perspective of the contributions of various tourism components on the carbon footprint, transportation and post and telecommunications account for the largest proportions. In the past ten years, the variations in the carbon footprint of inbound tourism in most provinces and cities in China were not very extreme, but maintained a relatively stable state. In the spatial dimension, the carbon footprint of China's inbound tourism tends to decrease from the southeast to the northwest. The highest coefficient of variation is in Ningxia and the lowest is in Liaoning. Based on these results, recommendations are put forward for sustainable development plans in some major cities and provinces for the future.

How to achieve sustainable development and protection of historical district is a worthwhile research topic. As a vital way to update urban space, tourism development in historical district is an effective solution to redistribute urban functions and increase urban vitality. This paper takes the Insadong in South Korea as a case to carry out the evaluation of tourist satisfaction in historical districts. The research finds that: 1) The tourist satisfaction evaluation of Insadong includes 6 dimensions in total, namely “Embodiment of historical elements”, “The blend of tradition and modernity”, Industry distribution and type", "Consumer demand", "Street layout and function", "Landscaping". The most satisfying for tourists is "Landscaping", and the most dissatisfying is "Street layout and function". 2) “The blend of tradition and modernity” has the highest weight while “Industry distribution and type” has the lowest one in the analysis of influencing factors on overall satisfaction. 3) The analysis of the common factor weight and the common factor satisfaction shows that “The blend of tradition and modernity” and “Street layout and function” are the parts that need to be improved. “Consumer demand” also has a lot of room for promotion. The research results will benefit to enhance the tourist experiences of historical district and provide theoretical basis and practical experience reference for effective protection and sustainable development of historical district.