YAN Mingyue, YAN Mingtao, ZHANG Ye, ZHAO Jianji
Dynamically grasping the spatiotemporal evolution and influencing factors of tourism high-quality development has important theoretical significance and practical value for promoting the construction of a strong tourism country. Based on the connotation of tourism high-quality development, this study constructs an evaluation index system encompassing four dimensions: tourism product services, tourism green development, tourism economic vitality, and tourism shared development. Utilizing the game theory combination weighting TOPSIS method, it assess the level of tourism high-quality development in 264 prefecture-level and above cities across China from 2011 to 2020. It also employs the spatial Markov chains, optimal parameter geographic detectors, and spatiotemporal geographically weighted regression to analyze its pattern evolution and influencing factors. The results indicate that: 1) Tourism high-quality development in China's urban areas exhibits a "multi-core agglomeration" spatial distribution characteristic, with hot spots concentrated in the southern coastal areas and cold spots in the central and western regions. The equilibrium entropy results show that 50.4% of cities have significant tourism development potential, primarily located in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Chongqing, and Anhui. 2) Neighboring regions play a crucial role in local high-quality tourism development, with changes in development levels exhibiting stable path dependence and club convergence effects, making it challenging to achieve leapfrog improvements. 3) Urbanization levels, digital economy, and openness to the outside world are the primary factors influencing tourism high-quality development, with their impacts exhibiting spatiotemporal differentiation. 4) From a geographical perspective, tourism high-quality development is influenced by the comprehensive effects of three geographic natures: The first geographic nature, represented by natural elements, plays a foundational role; The second geographic nature, represented by traditional economic development factors, serves a supporting role; The third geographic nature, represented by new economic factors, takes a leading role. The findings of this study not only deepen the relationship between geographic nature theory and tourism high-quality development, but also provide theoretical support and practical references for advancing tourism high-quality development at the urban scale.