Abstract:

Rural leisure tourism plays a key role in promoting the development, revitalization, and industrial restructuring of rural areas. However, there exist only a few studies on the distribution patterns and influencing factors based on point-like leisure tourism villages. Therefore, this study analyzed the spatial distribution pattern of 650 rural leisure tourism sites, announced by the Department of Culture and Tourism of Guangdong Province, based on the methods of the nearest neighbor index, kernel density analysis, and Ripley's K-function in geographic information system technology. The influencing factors of spatial distribution characteristics were also explored by combining buffer zone, raster, and correlation analyses. The conclusions drawn were five-fold. First, the rural leisure tourism sites in Guangdong Province showed the spatial distribution of significant clustering with the overall pattern of "two axes and multiple growth poles". Second, based on the overall distribution along the border and coast, the distribution was evaluated according to the high and low nuclear density values and formed a relatively independent agglomeration of single-core or double-core. The spatial pattern analysis exhibited the significant spatial autocorrelation between rural leisure tourism sites and the pronounced differences between hot and cold regions. Third, the overall spatial distance of rural leisure tourism sites was 118.36 km, with the agglomeration degree showing a trend of "first increasing and then decreasing" as the spatial distance increased. The spatial distances of the characteristics of each type of rural leisure tourism site showed significant differentiation. The spatial distance of historical relics was the largest and showed a strong agglomeration in a large spatial range. The spatial distance of folk culture and village architecture was ranked second, being close to one another. Due to the limitation of their resource endowment and other factors, the spatial distance of the natural landscape and industrial integration was the smallest, showing pronounced scale dependency. Fourth, among the influencing factors, resource endowment, traffic accessibility, and attractive scenic area as the supply-side factors provided the basis for developing the layout of rural leisure tourism in Guangdong Province. Social economy and tourism market as the demand-side factors were the key influencers of the layout. Public policy support and development planning were the management factors that secured the layout development. Innovation factors promoted the renewal and development of supply, demand, and management levels as a way to encourage the transformation and upgrading of rural leisure tourism. The joint regulation of multiple factors in the four dimensions of supply, demand, management, and innovation contributed to the formation of the spatial distribution pattern of the rural leisure tourism sites in Guangdong Province. Finally, the study posed relevant suggestions derived from the present case study to provide the basis for the optimal resource allocation and layout for the rural leisure tourism sites in Guangdong Province.

Key words: rural leisure tourism, rural leisure tourism place, kernel density, multi-scale features, Guangdong Province