Spatial Patterns and Driving Mechanisms of Rural Cultural Tourism Villages in Northwestern China: A Case Study of Gansu

Abstract

Rural cultural tourism has become an important pathway for rural revitalization in underdeveloped regions, yet its spatial organization and driving mechanisms remain insufficiently understood. This study investigates the spatial patterns, functional typology, and driving mechanisms—understood as statistically significant spatial associations—of 300 policy-designated rural cultural tourism villages in Gansu Province, China, using an integrated geospatial analytical framework incorporating the Average Nearest Neighbor Index, Kernel Density Estimation (KDE), the Lorenz Curve, Global Moran’s I, and the Geo-detector model. The results reveal a significant clustered distribution characterized by a pronounced “high-density southeast–low-density northwest” pattern. Five functional village types exhibit distinct spatial concentration characteristics associated with differences in resource endowments and development orientations. Geo-detector analysis identifies transportation accessibility, economic development, and topographic conditions as the factors most strongly associated with spatial heterogeneity. Interaction effects among natural, socioeconomic, and policy variables are also detectable. These findings advance the understanding of the spatial organization of rural cultural tourism and demonstrate the value of GIS-based spatial analysis for supporting evidence-based rural revitalization planning and sustainable territorial development in ecologically fragile regions.