Spatial distribution and influencing factors of tourism characteristic towns in China

The construction of tourism characteristics towns is conducive to comprehensively playing the industrial radiation function of tourism and promoting the coordinated development of urban and rural areas. This study takes 216 tourism characteristic towns among the national characteristic towns as the research object, uses the GIS spatial analysis method to deeply analyze the spatial distribution type, spatial distribution direction, and spatial pattern of different types of tourism characteristic towns, and uses geographical detectors to reveal the influencing factors that promote the formation of this spatial pattern. The research shows that: ① Tourism characteristic towns generally show a spatial agglomeration distribution, in which the resource support and characteristic industries are evenly distributed, and the other four types are clustered; ② The spatial distribution direction is “southwest-northeast”, among which the types of resource support, folk customs, health resort and vacation are similar to the general trend; ③ The spatial pattern is dominated by one high-density agglomeration area and three sub-aggregates, with large differences; ④ Tourism resources, traffic conditions and government support play an important role in the spatial distribution of tourism characteristic towns. The influence of various influencing factors on the spatial distribution of different types of tourism characteristic towns is significantly different, especially in the historical and cultural categories. The research results can provide strong support for the optimization of spatial structure and reasonable layout of regional tourism characteristic towns.