County Economic Regeneration through Cultural Economic Geography: The Case of Rongjiang's “Village Super League”

Amidst the weakening of traditional growth drivers, the cultural economy has emerged as a vital pathway for urban regeneration in China’s county-level cities. Focusing on the “Rongjiang Village Super League (VSL)” in Guizhou, this study adopts a cultural economic geography perspective to construct a “cultural capital transformation–industrial response” framework. We use a mixed-methods approach that integrates interrupted time series analysis of panel data (2012–2024) with in-depth interviews, we examine how localized cultural capital drives economic regeneration. Results show that the VSL, as an endogenous form of behavioral cultural capital, significantly transforms into economic value: accelerating tertiary sector growth and spurring a surge in cultural and sports enterprises. Three mechanisms—emotional activation of local identity, convergence of external resources, and industrial cross-boundary integration—underpin this transformation, collectively reshaping the county’s socioeconomic space. This study empirically validates the role of behavioral cultural capital in county-level regeneration, offering a grassroots Chinese case for culture-driven development.