IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0285141.html

Analysis of spatial perception and the influencing factors of attractions in Southwest China’s ethnic minority areas: The case of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture

Author

Listed:
  • Xiaoyan Yin
  • Xin Han
  • Taeyeol Jung

Abstract

As standards of material living continue to improve and urbanization advances, an increasing number of remote ethnic minority areas are becoming tourist destinations. Understanding tourists’ perceptions on a large scale is thus crucial for the development of the regional tourism industry. However, traditional research methods suffer from high costs, small sample sizes, and low efficiency, making it difficult to measure the spatial perception of remote areas on a large scale. This study constructs a research framework for spatial perception measurement of remote ethnic minority areas by collecting reviews data from Ctrip using spatiotemporal data calculation and the Geodetector model. We considered Dali Prefecture as an empirical case and analyzed tourists’ perceptions of the area’s attractions, the spatial distribution of the attractions, and the process of change in the explanatory power of their influencing factors over an eight-year period (2014–2021). The results indicated that the most visited attractions were concentrated in Dali City. The perception of humanistic resources (attractions) with historical value was the highest, followed by natural resources. The high perception of attractions was influenced by the level of tourism development, traffic accessibility and attractiveness, and had an increasing influence on tourists’ perceptions over time. Additionally, changes in the mode of transportation from road to high-speed rail played an important role in the selection of tourist attractions. Conversely, the tourists paid relatively less attention to humanistic resources (e.g., national cultural heritage protection units and traditional villages). Our study provides a basis for the measurement of spatial perception in remote minority areas and can be used as a reference for tourism development planning in Dali Prefecture, thus promoting the sustainable development of tourism in the area.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiaoyan Yin & Xin Han & Taeyeol Jung, 2023. "Analysis of spatial perception and the influencing factors of attractions in Southwest China’s ethnic minority areas: The case of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(6), pages 1-20, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0285141
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285141
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285141
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285141&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0285141?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jiang, Ting & Ryan, Chris & Zhang, Chaozhi, 2018. "The spiritual or secular tourist? The experience of Zen meditation in Chinese temples," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 187-199.
    2. Masiero, Lorenzo & Hrankai, Richard, 2022. "Modeling tourist accessibility to peripheral attractions," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    3. Rinaldo Brau, 2008. "Demand-Driven Sustainable Tourism? A Choice Modelling Analysis," Tourism Economics, , vol. 14(4), pages 691-708, December.
    4. Marrocu, Emanuela & Paci, Raffaele, 2013. "Different tourists to different destinations. Evidence from spatial interaction models," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 71-83.
    5. Pantano, Eleonora & Priporas, Constantinos-Vasilios & Stylos, Nikolaos, 2017. "‘You will like it!’ using open data to predict tourists' response to a tourist attraction," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 430-438.
    6. Lee, Yi-Ju, 2015. "Creating memorable experiences in a reuse heritage site," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 155-170.
    7. Filieri, Raffaele & Alguezaui, Salma & McLeay, Fraser, 2015. "Why do travelers trust TripAdvisor? Antecedents of trust towards consumer-generated media and its influence on recommendation adoption and word of mouth," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 174-185.
    8. Chih-Hsing Liu, 2020. "Local and international perspectives of the influence of creative experiences of Chinese traditional culture on revisit intentions," Current Issues in Tourism, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 17-35, January.
    9. Hardy, Anne & Birenboim, Amit & Wells, Martha, 2020. "Using geoinformatics to assess tourist dispersal at the state level," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    10. Xiang, Zheng & Magnini, Vincent P. & Fesenmaier, Daniel R., 2015. "Information technology and consumer behavior in travel and tourism: Insights from travel planning using the internet," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 244-249.
    11. Cao, Zheng & Li, Gang & Song, Haiyan, 2017. "Modelling the interdependence of tourism demand: The global vector autoregressive approach," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 1-13.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bing Liu & Zixuan Liu & Libo Fang, 2025. "RETRACTED ARTICLE: Innovative Approaches to Assessing Urban Space Quality: A Multi-Source Big Data Perspective on Knowledge Dynamics," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 16(2), pages 6803-6841, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. A Fronzetti Colladon & B Guardabascio & R Innarella, 2021. "Using social network and semantic analysis to analyze online travel forums and forecast tourism demand," Papers 2105.07727, arXiv.org.
    2. Zhou, Bo & Zhang, Ying & Zhou, Peng, 2021. "Multilateral political effects on outbound tourism," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    3. Josef Zelenka & Tracy Azubuike & Martina Pásková, 2021. "Trust Model for Online Reviews of Tourism Services and Evaluation of Destinations," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-21, March.
    4. Jahyun Goo & C. Derrick Huang & Chul Woo Yoo & Chulmo Koo, 2022. "Smart Tourism Technologies’ Ambidexterity: Balancing Tourist’s Worries and Novelty Seeking for Travel Satisfaction," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 24(6), pages 2139-2158, December.
    5. Jian-Wu Bi & Tian-Yu Han & Yanbo Yao, 2024. "Collaborative forecasting of tourism demand for multiple tourist attractions with spatial dependence: A combined deep learning model," Tourism Economics, , vol. 30(2), pages 361-388, March.
    6. Pedro Cuesta-Valiño & Fadoua Bolifa & Estela Núñez-Barriopedro, 2020. "Sustainable, Smart and Muslim-Friendly Tourist Destinations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-13, February.
    7. Li, Cheng & Zheng, Weimin & Ge, Peng, 2022. "Tourism demand forecasting with spatiotemporal features," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    8. Yessi Rahmawati, 2023. "A spatial econometric analysis of tourism demand of foreign visitors to japan: regional nature and culture connected to tourism development," Journal of Spatial Econometrics, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 1-19, December.
    9. John, Surej P. & De'Villiers, Rouxelle, 2020. "Elaboration of marketing communication through visual media: An empirical analysis," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    10. Pantano, Eleonora & Priporas, Constantinos-Vasilios & Stylos, Nikolaos, 2017. "‘You will like it!’ using open data to predict tourists' response to a tourist attraction," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 430-438.
    11. Marie Al-Ghossein & Talel Abdessalem & Anthony Barré, 2018. "Open data in the hotel industry: leveraging forthcoming events for hotel recommendation," Information Technology & Tourism, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 191-216, December.
    12. Yang, Yang & Zhang, Honglei, 2019. "Spatial-temporal forecasting of tourism demand," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 106-119.
    13. Yumeng Cheng & Wanqing Wang & Takeshi Kinoshita & Konomi Ikebe, 2025. "Fostering Sustainable Livelihoods and Community Resilience in a Depopulated Japanese Mountainous Settlement: Connecting Local Culture and Ikigai-Zukuri Through the Ōsawa Engawa Café," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(11), pages 1-49, June.
    14. Wenming Shi & Meifeng Luo & Mengjie Jin & Seu Keow Cheng & Kevin X. Li, 2020. "Urban–rural income disparity and inbound tourism: Spatial evidence from China," Tourism Economics, , vol. 26(7), pages 1231-1247, November.
    15. Yan, Min & Filieri, Raffaele & Gorton, Matthew, 2021. "Continuance intention of online technologies: A systematic literature review," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    16. de Graaff, Thomas & Panzera, Elisa & de Groot, Henri L.F., 2026. "Going the distance?—A meta-analysis of the deterring effect of distance in tourism," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    17. Tavakoli, Rokhshad & Mura, Paolo, 2018. "Netnography in tourism – Beyond Web 2.0," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 190-192.
    18. Liu, Chih-Hsing & Dong, Tse-Ping & Vu, Ho Tran, 2023. "Transformed virtual concepts into reality: Linkage the viewpoint of entrepreneurial passion, technology adoption propensity and advantage to usage intention," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    19. Canh Phuc Nguyen, 2023. "Do institutions matter for tourism spending?," Tourism Economics, , vol. 29(1), pages 248-281, February.
    20. Ahmed Abdel Fattah & Mary Eddy-U, 2022. "The unique twin approaches of Sufi Sheikhs and host-guest relationships at El Sayed Ahmed El-Badawy Mosque in Egypt," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 2723-2750, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0285141. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.