Spatiotemporal Changes in Synergy Effect Between Tourism Industry and Urban–Rural Integration Development in Yellow River Basin, China

The imbalance between urban and rural development has become a global structural problem that needs to be solved urgently. In this context, the tourism industry, with its strong correlation and cross-regional integration characteristics, provides a key practical entry point and mechanism for systematically promoting integrated development by stimulating factor flow, reconstructing the value chain, and reshaping local identity. Based on the synergetic theory, this paper constructs the theoretical framework of the synergetic evolution of the tourism industry and urban–rural integration, and analyzes the synergetic effect of the tourism industry and urban–rural integration in 58 prefecture-level cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2007 to 2021 and the dynamic characteristics of its spatio-temporal evolution by using the entropy TOPSIS, Haken model, and spatial Markov chain methods. The results show the following: ① As the order parameter of synergistic evolution, the tourism industry dominates the evolution direction of the whole system, mainly showing positive feedback effect, showing a significant stage characteristic in general, and gradually reducing the difference from the initial regional differentiation to the middle stage, finally reaching a higher level of unity. ② The synergic evolution of the tourism industry and urban–rural integration in the Yellow River Basin presents significant temporal and spatial differences in the upstream, midstream, and downstream, with the overall characteristics of “collaborative improvement in the upstream, significant agglomeration in the midstream, and reverse decoupling in the downstream”. ③ The dynamic evolution of the synergistic development of the tourism industry and urban–rural integration in the Yellow River Basin has significant characteristics of spatial interaction and dynamic transfer. Its level has the effect of “path dependence”, showing a good trend of upward transfer, and the spatial neighborhood has a significant impact on the synergetic level transfer. The development trend of each region shows that “the upstream region is upward and stable, the midstream region has significant agglomeration and diffusion effects, and the downstream region is driven by polar nuclei and spatial differentiation”.