Heritage tourism integration patterns: MaxEnt analysis of China’s Yellow River Basin
Abstract
Abstract Cultural practices follow predictable spatial laws analogous to biological distributions. Using Maximum Entropy modeling on 1042 heritage sites across China’s Yellow River Basin, we demonstrate that anthropogenic land use alone accounts for 86.9% of heritage distribution—exceeding all natural factors combined. This reveals a fundamental shift: cultural geography has decoupled from physical geography in the Anthropocene. Heritage tends to concentrate at intermediate development levels, contradicting both preservationist and developmentalist assumptions. Stark regional disparities emerge: eastern provinces achieve heritage-tourism synergy (coupling >0.65) through agglomeration economies, while western regions remain disconnected (
Fields of Study & Subjects
Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation
Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research
Land Use and Ecosystem Services
Publication details
- Journal / source
- npj Heritage Science
- Publisher
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 1
- Publication date
- 7 May 2026
- Language
- EN