Coupling coordination between cultural tourism and new-type urbanization in China: Spatial-temporal evolution and key determinants (2012–2022)

The study examines how cultural tourism development interacts with new-type urbanization in China through panel data of 31 provinces (2012–2022), an improved entropy method, a coupling coordination model, and an obstacle analysis framework. Results show a steady rise in national coordination, with a brief decline in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by rapid recovery. Spacially, it follows a gradient of eastern > central > western > northeast, and the western is now above the northeast. All regions show fluctuating upwards trends and narrowing of regional disparities and the system resilience is also increased. Key constraints to further improvement include the optimization of cultural tourism industry structure, the efficiency of cultural resource utilization, and the level of economic urbanization. • Coordination trended upward with V-shaped resilience from 2012 to 2022. • Western region surpassed the Northeast, reshaping spatial hierarchies. • Cultural tourism supply lags remain the dominant constraints nationwide. • Panel Tobit identifies government regulation and consumption as drivers. • Differentiated strategies address regional structural disparities.