Digital Empowerment and Sustainable Tourism: Spatiotemporal Coupling Coordination Analysis of Digital Technology and High-Quality Development in China’s A-Level Scenic Spots

The rapid advancement of digital technology has profoundly transformed the tourism industry, driving a shift from scale expansion toward high-quality and sustainable growth. However, spatiotemporal nature of digital empowerment’s support for sustainable tourism, particularly under heterogeneous regional conditions, remains insufficiently examined. To address this gap, this study constructs a dual-system evaluation framework and employs the entropy method to measure the spatiotemporal Coupling Coordination Degree (CCD) between digital technology and tourism development of A-Level Scenic Spots across 30 Chinese provinces (2013–2020). The entropy method is employed to build indicator systems for both subsystems, and CCD is calculated to assess the interaction strength and coordination level. The results reveal that: (1) A-level scenic spot development exhibits significant spatial heterogeneity, declining clearly from Eastern/Central to Western/Northeast regions; (2) CCD showed a general upward trend during 2013–2019 and it followed a nonlinear trajectory of decline first but then recovery, establishing a stable spatial pattern: East > Central > West/Northeast; (3) The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused a temporary drop in CCD nationwide, but regional resilience varied considerably; (4) Provinces in the disordered stage are generally of the digital technology lagging type. Economic foundation, digital facilities, industrial structure and innovation capability are key drivers of coordination differences. We propose that leading regions should focus on cross-regional data sharing and green-smart upgrading, while lagging regions must prioritize digital infrastructure investment and talent introduction to effectively bridge the digital divide and foster equitable and high-quality sustainable tourism development. This study provides new insights for promoting regional sustainability through digital technology development and offers policy recommendations for advancing digital–tourism synergy in different regional contexts.