As one of the most dynamic economic phenomena nowadays, regional integration is considered to be a multi-dimensional spatial phenomenon and a multidisciplinary scientific issue. With the increase in the difficulty of multilateral free trade negotiations, the global free trade system has come to a deadlock. At the same time, many bilateral or limited multilateral regional integration organizations have been triumphantly aroused, which make regional integration become one of the most valuable research issues. The rapidly increasing number of integrated organizations and the deepening cooperation inside the organizations both show that a new round of regional integration tide is emerging. In this context, geography’s unique scale, link and border perspective are important for understanding how regional integration can change the world economic pattern and its impact on national and regional development. This paper reviews the theory and development of regional integration, reexamines the rapid development of regional integration process from the perspective of scale, link and border, and expounds the network characteristics, multi-dimensional connection and multiple borders in regional integration processes. In order to better understand regional and local development, some recent researches are discussed from the perspective of “global-local” links. Some basic understandings are expounded in this paper. The practice of regional integration is showing more and more characteristics of the network, forming a network space driven by state power and based on relationships. The multi-dimensional proximity within the regional integration is the driving force for the rapid development and diversified forms. With the emergence of a large number of regional integration organizations, the construction of global scales also requires more consideration of the roles of regions and the links of multiple dimensions. Regional integration builds a new border, which is essentially based on the relationship between members, relying on the state forces to intervene and regulate trade and other relationships. It is a selective, directional and dynamic network, showing a characteristic of “re-territorialization”. At the same time, the traditional territorial border is still important. Regional integration reshapes the local development model and economic geography patterns of member countries, and its institutional arrangements deeply influence the border region development and industrial geography patterns. This paper summarizes the theoretical and practical characteristics of regional integration from the perspective of economic geography, points out some related problems and some future research trends from the perspective of scale construction, internal links, border effect and multi-dimension analysis for better understanding and practicing regional integration.
Under the background of the space shift of contemporary academic trends, many disciplines have a new understanding of space, and the research on space production and tourism space production has gradually attracted the attention of domestic scholars. Based on the journal perspective, using bibliometric method and content analysis method, through the high frequency keywords, the paper constructed a space production research knowledge system, which consisted of the evolution of space production theory, main research backgrounds, main research perspectives, main space types, main space scales, main research objectives, main research epistemology, and research representative figures, to discuss the research hotspots of space production in China. Overall, China has experienced the following stages of space production: introduction of pure space production theory/interpretation of introducing-space production theory/demonstration of analysis - space production theory/ Chinese reflection of application-space production theory/Chinese theory. It should be noted that the above stages had more or less difference in the literature accumulation, the related research literature was more in the early stages, while the literature on Chinese reflection of the space production theory, especially the relevant research literature about Chinese theory was very little and weak. However, it does not mean that the future domestic research of space production would pay less attention to early stages and more attention to later stages, it would be more reasonable to yield brilliant results in each stage for a long time in the future. On the basis of review of domestic research on tourism space production, we found that the journals and authors of tourism space production research were relatively concentrated, qualitative research methods were mainly used, the research was mainly for ancient town tourism and community tourism space, the main analytical contents included concept definition, the production subject research, production frame construction, and production power anatomy. Finally, the paper looked into the research on tourism space production from four aspects. First, to encourage interdisciplinary academic exchanges, draw multidisciplinary academic spillovers, and strengthen the research of the uneven development of tourism space, the separation of tourism space, the alienation of tourism space and the injustice of tourism space. Second, to pay attention to theoretical research, lay a solid foundation for research, explore how to apply the theories of the space production in tourism research, and think about if the tourism space production is different from the research of other disciplines/fields, what is the analytic paradigm of tourism space production, and how to make the tourism space production theory get into Chinese reflection/Chinese theory. Third, to further strengthen the empirical research from the perspective of spatial production, and different types of tourism space, such as festival tourism, ethnic tourism, rural tourism, heritage tourism, industrial tourism and historical district tourism. Fourth, to conduct the empirical research of tourism space production by using multi-discourse analysis, text sentiment analysis, bibliometrics and social network analysis.
Tourism market research including tourism consumer behavior and preference etc is the core content of tourism theory development and operation practice. Generational analysis is one of the most useful segmentation methods, because of the relative homogeneity within generations and obvious heterogeneity across generations. Therefore, generational analysis and generation theory can be used to forecast the needs of different generations and can explain the tourists' consumer behavior well. This paper reviews the newly study progresses of the application of generation theory in tourism research from the following three aspects: connotation and extension of generation theory, generation division around the world and China, and the specific application practices in tourism research through analyzing the related studies and references. Internationally, from the perspective of tourists’ travel consumer behavior, many studies not only focused on the cross-sectional comparisons among the different generations but also paid attention to longitudinal comparison of the same generation and the effects of age, generation cohort and common important affairs on tourist travel consumer behavior. The breadth and depth of the research were constantly expanding, and the scientific empirical study provided the theoretical guidance for the development of tourism management. In contrast, almost no study using generation theory to discuss the tourism consume market was carried out in China. Therefore, the future emphases to study tourism consumer behavior using generation theory should be focused on the following four aspects: 1) clarifying Chinese generation division and characterizing the different generations from the collective memory (significant political, economic, cultural and technological events or environmental resources) rather than their ages; 2) differentiating tourism consumer behavior such as motivations, information sources, destination choices, travel activity preferences and destination evaluation criteria etc; 3) studying the coupling relationship between generation theory and regional differences in geographical location, cultural background, economic level, living conditions, ethnic and religious beliefs, degree of openness to the outside world and other aspects; 4) expanding the spatial and temporal scales of generation theory in tourism research including the comparisons of tourism consumer behavior from different generations and the same generation of different countries.
As a fast-growing industry in recent years, commercial fitness clubs have become significant parts of consumer services industries. However, relatively few studies on the spatial distribution of commercial fitness clubs in a city have been conducted at the street and town level. In addition, there are few studies on factors influencing the spatial distribution of commercial fitness clubs by quantitative analysis methods. To make up for this deficiency, this paper analyzed the spatial distribution of commercial fitness clubs utilizing the methods of GIS spatial analysis and spatial auto-correlation on the basis of POI data of 743 commercial fitness clubs, 136 subway stations and 6 013 residential neighborhoods in Guangzhou City collected from online map. Furthermore, spatial lag model (SLM) has been adopted to explore the influential factors of the spatial distribution of commercial fitness clubs in Guangzhou based on the latest demographic and housing-related data from the 6th population census in 2010 in Guangzhou. The results show: 1) The spatial distribution of commercial fitness clubs in Guangzhou is unbalanced and its quantity decreases generally from the central urban area to surrounding regions where small clusters exist as well, which shows a “center circle + peripheral group” structure. Specifically, 70.52% of the commercial fitness clubs are located in the central urban area, and the rest 29.48% which are located in the surrounding regions mostly gather in central towns. There is significant spatial agglomeration and correlation of commercial fitness clubs in Guangzhou. 2) Only a few commercial fitness clubs are located along main roads or near subway stations, while most of the commercial fitness clubs, accounting for 94.21%, are located near residential neighborhoods. That is to say, the distribution along city roads and subway stations is not obvious, but obvious near residential neighborhoods. 3) With regard to the influential factors on the spatial distribution of commercial fitness clubs, population scale and educational level play more important roles than location factors and community features. Both of these two demographic characteristics have positive impact on the quantity of commercial fitness clubs in townships. This result proves that market is a significant factor influencing the spatial distribution of consumer services industries. In this paper, it is found that the location factor is not a key factor affecting the spatial distribution of commercial fitness clubs in Guangzhou, which is different from previous views that location factors, especially traffic location, have essential effects on the spatial distribution of consumer services industries. The findings in this paper would enrich the research on spatial distribution of consumer services industries.
