Coordinated Development among Digital Villages, Cultural Tourism, and Rural Revitalization in China: An Analysis Based on the Entropy Weight Method and the Coupling Coordination Model

Against the backdrop of global digitalization and rural revitalization, the synergistic development of digital rural construction, cultural tourism and rural revitalization is crucial for unleashing rural endogenous driving forces, optimizing urban-rural factor allocation and consolidating the agricultural foundation, making it imperative to explore their coordination mechanism. However, existing rural research mostly focuses on binary system coupling while ignoring their tripartite interaction; the evaluation framework for digital rural construction also lacks a governance dimension, failing to fully reflect the application effects of digital technologies in agricultural production and rural governance. The main findings are as follows: (1) From 2014 to 2024, the comprehensive development levels of the three systems showed steady growth, with distinct differences in their growth rhythms, fluctuation characteristics, and driving forces. (2) The internal coordination of each subsystem increased, with digital rural construction rising from 0.151 to 0.782, cultural tourism fluctuating from 0.169 to 0.955 (dropping to 0.463 in 2020), and rural revitalization growing from 0.158 to 0.620 at a slower pace. (3) The overall coupling coordination degree improved significantly, rising from 0.100 (extreme imbalance) in 2014 to 0.955 (high-quality coordination) in 2024, progressing through three stages: unidirectional support, bidirectional interaction, and tri-dimensional symbiosis. This study contributes to the understanding of tripartite synergy in rural development, offering empirical evidence for integrating digital rural construction and cultural tourism to empower rural revitalization and providing guidance for policy formulation and optimization.