Spatial inequalities of agritourism research for rural revitalisation

With the growing global emphasis on targeted poverty alleviation and rural revitalisation, the alignment of research funding and academic focus with the needs of vulnerable and impoverished populations remains unclear. Our study, utilising data from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), reveals a disproportionate concentration of academic efforts from 2017 to 2022 on the economically affluent regions of East and South China, accounting for 51.0% of outputs, predominantly at the provincial and prefectural levels (63.2%). In stark contrast, a mere 7.2% of scholarly publications addressed the concerns of only 4.1% of the nationally recognised poverty-stricken counties (832 in total). This disparity underscores the urgent necessity for a strategic reorientation of research priorities towards the underdeveloped and impoverished regions that are most in need of scholarly attention and revitalisation efforts.