International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning Vol. 15, No. 2, March, 2020, pp. 239-246 Journal homepage: http://iieta.org/journals/ijsdp Spatial Distribution of National Tourist Resorts and Its Influencing Factors Hua Ding1,2*, Yanqing Xue1,2, Xingyi Jiang3, Xiaonan Li4, Wei Zhang1,2 1 School of Architecture, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710061, China 2 Institute of Tourism Planning and Design, Chang'an University, Xi’an 710061, China 3 School of Civil & Architecture Engineering, Xi’an Technological University, Xi’an 710021, China 4 School of Economics and Management, Chang'an University, Xi’an 710054, China Corresponding Author Email:
[email protected] https://doi.org/10.18280/ijsdp.150215 ABSTRACT Received: 22 April 2019 Tourism in China is gradually shifting from sightseeing to recreational tourism. The shift calls Accepted: 3 January 2020 for transformation and upgrading of tourism products. Therefore, it is critical to rationalize the spatial distribution of tourist resorts. Targeting 30 national tourist resorts in China, this Keywords: paper systematically analyzes the spatial distribution of these resorts, using nearest neighbor China, national tourist resorts, spatial index (NNI), Gini coefficient, and kernel density estimation (KDE). Besides, a spatial distribution, spatial regression model, regression model was adopted to identify the influencing factors of the spatial distribution. influencing factors The results show that: China’s national tourist resorts are mainly concentrated in four hotspots in East, Southwest, South, and Central China; the spatial distribution is strongly influenced by the provincial/regional tourism and capital investment, greatly impacted by infrastructure and economy, and slightly affected by government support and ecological awareness; in the future, China should develop more tourist resorts in the northwest, north and northeast, and set up a multi-core spatial distribution and product system.