In 2022, Chinese government emphasized the necessity of “comprehensively promoting rural revitalization” to achieve the goal of “insisting on shaping tourism with culture and highlighting culture with tourism, and promoting the deep integration of culture and tourism”. As a result of the ongoing promotion of the strategy of rural revitalization and the policy of culture and tourism integration, China’s rural tourism market has grown, new business ventures have emerged, beautiful village construction has advanced, and rural tourism has had a notable positive impact on the livelihoods of farmers and the advancement of the people (Tang et al., 2023b). In December 2022, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) jointly selected and launched 1399 national key villages and 198 national key towns (townships) for rural tourism, and rural tourism has increasingly become a new force for rural revitalization (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2022). However, China’s rural tourism still suffers from insufficient characteristic culture, the wasting of resources, ecological damage and other problems, which restricts rural revitalization and the high-quality development of culture and tourism. Under the guidance of the national development strategy and the attention of society, major social realities, such as rural revitalization and the high-quality development of culture and tourism, opening up new scenes, bringing new ideas and injecting new vitality into rural revitalization, and realizing the countryside to provide “thriving businesses, pleasant living environments, social etiquette and civility, effective governance, and prosperity”, are the focus of current and even future academic research.

Therefore, the main topics of this issue of the Journal of Resources and Ecology cover five aspects: “rural revitalization and rural tourism high-quality development”, “rural tourism destination and homestay development”, “tourism environmental behavior and farmers’ participation in tourism”, “tourism resilience and tourism risk”, and “cultural tourism and tourism high-quality development”. The 22 representative articles in this issue were chosen to provide in-depth research on these topics.

Industrial revitalization is the top priority of rural revitalization, and as an important carrier of rural revitalization in the new era, rural tourism has an important role to play in promoting the economic development, livelihood improvement, ecological protection and cultural inheritance of rural areas. The high-quality development of rural tourism is an inevitable choice for implementing the high-quality development of China’s economy and boosting the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside. The paper “Coupling Effect and Driving Mechanisms in High-quality Development of Rural Tourism and Rural Revitalization—Taking Hunan Province as a Case Study” takes Hunan Province as the research area, and by constructing a coupling coordination model, it comprehensively evaluates the dynamic evolutionary process of the coupling coordination of rural tourism and rural revitalization, explores the coupling coordination of the Rural tourism-Rural revitalization system, and the dominant influencing factors and driving mechanisms of the coupling coordination (Li et al., 2024c). Based on the characteristics of rural tourism development in Xi’an metropolitan area, “Coordinated Situation and Dynamic Mechanism of Rural Tourism and Rural Revitalization in the Metropolitan Area of Xi’an” adopts the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to measure the development level of the coupled coordination of rural tourism and rural revitalization in Xi’an metropolitan area. It summarizes the driving mechanism of the coordinated development of rural tourism and rural revitalization in combination with typical cases. Rural tourism investment (RTI) is the core driving force for promoting the sustainable development of rural tourism, and scientific rural tourism investment decisions play a role in guaranteeing the high-quality development of rural tourism (Fu and Zhang, 2024). “Evolution Pattern of Rural Tourism Investment Location Choice from the Perspective of Human-Land Relationship System: Based on a Case Study of Zhejiang Province, China” clarifies the connotation of rural tourism investment from the perspective of human-land relations, and takes the developed rural tourism region of Zhejiang Province as a case study to identify a system of influencing factors for investment location decision-making in rural tourism based on the industrial-economic, social-cultural, and natural environmental location factors. Rural cultural revitalization is an important part of rural revitalization, and the high-quality development of rural tourism cannot be separated from the protection and inheritance of traditional culture (Li et al., 2024b). “Dilemma Analysis and Path Exploration of the Integrated Development of Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in Beijing from the Perspective of Rural Revitalization” integrates the concepts of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and tourism to support rural development, introduces the RMPP (Resource-Market-Product-Policy) evaluation index system, and analyzes the differences in the development and integration of intangible cultural heritage resources and tourism in the dimensions of resources, market, product, and policy in the 10 suburbs under Beijing’s jurisdiction. It summarizes the difficulties in the integrated development of Beijing’s intangible cultural heritage and tourism, and several issues in the integrated development of ICH and tourism in Beijing were identified (Fan et al., 2024). Digital technology is accelerating into all aspects of rural cultural tourism, becoming a new engine for the high-quality development of rural tourism and rural revitalization. Based on the perspective of digital culture and tourism, “The Mode and Path of Digital Cultural Tourism to Promote Rural Revitalization” summarizes the opportunities and challenges of digital cultural tourism for rural revitalization, and explores the development mode and practice path in combination with existing research. In the new stage of comprehensively promoting rural revitalization, as an important means to lead rural revitalization, rural tourism has received academic attention in terms of the principle, mechanism and path of its high-quality development (Tang et al., 2024). In this special issue, the relationship between rural revitalization and the high-quality development of rural tourism is systematically analyzed, and the modes and paths of rural revitalization and high-quality development of rural tourism are interpreted based on the perspectives of investment in rural tourism, the integration of cultural heritage, and the empowerment of digital technology, which are of urgent practical significance.

As the carrier of rural tourism activities, the promotion of high-quality development in rural tourism is a common goal of the government, enterprises, residents and tourists. Based on the complexity theory and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method, “Understanding the Value Co-creation Behavior of Rural Tourists: An application of fsQCA” reveals the complex mechanism of tourists’ participation in value co-creation behavior, and expands the application of tourists’ value co-creation behavior (Li et al., 2024a). “Change and Driving Mechanism of the Daily Living Space of Residents in Rural Tourist Destinations—An Exploratory Analysis based on a Cognitive Map” proposes a framework for analyzing residents’ daily life space constructed on the triad of material-behavioral-emotional space, and applies cognitive maps to the small-scale study of residents’ daily life space in villages. It identifies the driving mechanism of spatial representation, which is a driving system formed by the natural conditions, policies and systems, and self-organization and other organizations (Xu et al., 2024). Traditional villages are valuable gene pools for the inheritance of excellent traditional Chinese culture, and they are also rural tourism destinations with resource endowment advantages. “Effect of Traditional Village Landscape Genes on Tourists’ Image Construction: Case Study of Zhangguying Village” is based on the identification and extraction of traditional village landscape genes and the “cognitive-emotional-whole” tourism imagery analysis framework, and the role of traditional village landscape genes in the construction of tourism imagery was analyzed through structural equation modeling (Liu et al., 2024). From an industrial perspective, rural lodging is an important form of rural tourism, an important driving force for rural economic growth, and an important link to help comprehensively promote rural revitalization. “How to Achieve High-performance Rural Guesthouse Entrepreneurship—Mechanism Study of Place Identity and Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy” constructs a theoretical model of the relationship between local identity, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and farmers’ guesthouse entrepreneurial performance. It explores the notion that entrepreneurial self-efficacy plays a partially mediating role in the relationship between local identity and farmers’ Guesthouse entrepreneurial performance, which provides a theoretical basis for the improvement of Guesthouse entrepreneurial performance in the context of rural revitalization (Zhou et al., 2024b). “Exploring Spatial Distribution and Influencing Factors of B&Bs in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei in the Regional Integration Context based on Big Data” explores the spatial distribution of B&Bs in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and analyzes the influencing factors and their degree of influence on B&Bs from the perspectives of both the government and the market. Rural tourism is an effective way to promote the development of rural areas, and among the many types of businesses developed in rural tourism destinations, rural lodging is undoubtedly the core element driving the development of a rural tourism destination (Li et al., 2024d). In this special issue, the mechanism of mutual influence among stakeholders in the process of rural tourism development is explored from the perspective of rural tourism destinations, tourists and residents. Also, the important role of homestays in the development of the rural tourism destination is analyzed through the construction of a model and the method of big data, which provides theoretical guidance for the high-quality development of rural tourism destinations.

Constructing a good tourism environmental behavior system is an important method for realizing the high-quality development of tourism, which is aligned with the goals of comprehensively promoting rural revitalization, strengthening the construction of ecological civilization, and realizing common prosperity. “Influence of Tourists’ Perception of Rural Tourism Quality and Place Attachment on Tourists’ Environmentally Responsible Behavior: A Case Study of the Longji Terrace Scenic Area in Guangxi” constructed a structural equation model with rural tourism quality perception as the antecedent variable and local attachment as the mediator variable, and explored the factors influencing tourists’ environmentally responsible behaviors in the rural tourism context (Chen et al., 2024). “Research on the Generation Path and Influencing Factors of Pro-environmental Behavior based on Motivation-oriented Mechanism—Taking Camping Tourism as an Example” starts from consumer motivation, takes leisure involvement and local attachment as dual mediating variables, and explores the mechanism that influences the pro-environmental behavior of leisure consumers in camping tourism. It provides a theoretical framework for guiding camping consumers to civilized camping, green camping, and traceless camping (Yang et al., 2024). Based on the attribution theory and norm activation model, “Exploring the Norm-activation Model-based Mechanisms Influencing the Willingness of Environmentally Friendly Behavior of Backpackers” explores the mechanism influencing tourists’ willingness to adopt environmentally friendly behaviors based on various internal and external factors, and constructs and verifies the individual norm activation model (Xie and Xu, 2024). Farmers are the core subjects of rural tourism development, and their willingness to participate is directly related to the development level of rural tourism. “Influencing Factors of Farmers’ Self-organized Participation in Collective Actions in Rural Tourism of China” adopts the research method of questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews, and explores the factors influencing farmers’ self-organized participation in collective action in rural tourism in China based on the IAD Intelligent Decision Making Extended Model (Luo et al., 2024). Rural tourism is an important medium for tourists to interact with local residents, and both tourists’ tourism environmental behaviors and the degree of participation of local residents are of great significance to the high-quality development of rural tourism. In this issue, the analysis of various environmental behaviors of tourists provides a deep understanding of the mechanism of interaction between tourists and the local environment in rural tourism. In addition, questionnaires and interviews are used to explore the factors influencing farmers’ self-organization and participation in collective action in Chinese rural tourism, which is very useful for scientifically guiding the behaviors of tourists and residents in rural tourism.

Creating a resilient tourism destination and forming a low-risk and dynamic tourism industry is necessary for the high-quality development of tourism and rural revitalization. “Evaluation of the Development Resilience of Tourist Attractions under the Influence of Major Public Health Events” takes resilience theory as the research perspective and constructs a resilience evaluation index system for the development of tourist attractions. The study found that the ability to resist disruption is the most important dimension reflecting the level of resilience of tourist attractions, followed by the ability to renew and restore, and the ability to prevent such disruptions is relatively less influential (Wang et al., 2024). The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a severe blow to tourism, and governmental guidance is an important path for tourism recovery in the post-pandemic era. “The Effect of Perceived Susceptibility of COVID-19 on Health Risk Perception, Risk Aversion and Travel Intentions: The Moderating Effects of Trust in Government” investigates the relationship between perceived COVID-19 susceptibility, health risk perception, risk avoidance and willingness to travel, and discusses the moderating role of government trust, which contributes to the recovery of the tourism economy in the post-epidemic era and to the development of marketing strategies for destinations (Zhou et al., 2024a). Study tourism is an important booster for rural revitalization. “Research on Study Travel Safety Resilience Assessment based on Entropy Weight-Normal Cloud Model” constructs a safety resilience assessment index system and a safety resilience assessment model for study tours from the four dimensions of economy, society, infrastructure and ecological environment, and combines the features of earthquake prevention and mitigation, emergency response and recovery, learning improvement, and others. The indexes and model are validated by using an entropy weight and normal cloud model, and by using the city of Dujiangyan as an example (Zhai et al., 2024). Mountainous rural areas are one type of typical villages, and the vulnerability of rural settlements in mountainous areas has an important impact on the sustainable development of the villages. “Vulnerability and Influencing Factors for Rural Settlements Land Use in Karst Mountains of China: Case Study on Qixingguan District” constructs a basic organizational framework and evaluation index system of rural settlement vulnerability from the three dimensions of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptability. It covers factors such as the characteristics of the natural environment and the level of social development, and employs the spatial analysis function of GIS and the geographic detector model method to reveal the vulnerability of karst rural areas and its interaction mechanism. The reconstruction and self-organization abilities after risk impact is a key element in determining the sustainable development of rural tourism, while the capacity for risk perception and risk treatment is important for the high-quality development of rural tourism (Wei et al., 2024). In this special issue, the factors influencing the resilience of all kinds of tourism elements in different crisis contexts are explored, and the evaluation method of tourism risk is constructed with study tourism as the entry point, which promotes the sustainable development and high-quality development of rural tourism.

Cultural heritage and educational resources are the core resources for the high-quality development of tourism. “Understanding Local People’s Support Intention toward Cultural Heritage Tourism: An Examination Through Stimulus-Organism-Response Perspective” presents a research model of subjective norms, personal norms, and locals’ perceptions and their willingness to support from the perspective of cultural heritage tourism in combination with the S-O-R theory. The study shows that subjective norms significantly affect local people’s perception and willingness to support, and the local people’s perception also significantly affects their willingness to support cultural heritage tourism (Huang et al., 2024). “Spatial-Temporal Evolutionary Patterns and Influencing Factors of Educational Tourism Resources in China from 1997 to 2021” uses spatial analysis techniques to analyze the characteristics of spatial evolution in four types of educational tourism resources, namely, historical sites, cultural, scientific and technological venues, former residences of celebrities, and cultural and educational venues, as well as their influencing factors. The study found that China’s educational tourism resources show a cohesive distribution trend, forming a “dual-core structure” with the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations as the high-density cores. Industrial agglomeration helps to promote the high-quality development of the tourism economy (Zhu et al., 2024). “The Impact of Tourism Industry Agglomeration on the High-quality Development of China’s Tourism Economy: Testing based on the Spatial Durbin and Threshold Models” uses spatial econometric models and threshold regression models to analyze the spatial spillover effect of tourism industry agglomeration on the high-quality development of the tourism economy and the threshold characteristics (Yao et al., 2024). “Exploring the Relationship between Tourist Involvement and the Tourists’ Authentic Happiness based on the Perspective of Constructive-Developmental Theory” explores the mechanism of influence among tourism involvement, tourism satisfaction and genuine happiness, and provides theoretical references and practical suggestions for the self-development of tourists, as well as for the related enterprises and governmental departments, to better enhance the genuine happiness of tourists. Tourism resources are the carrier of tourism development, and the scientific utilization of tourism resources is a necessary way to realize the high-quality development of tourism (Zhang et al., 2024). In this issue, the spatial and temporal evolutionary patterns and influencing factors of educational tourism resources are summarized, and the willingness of local people to support cultural heritage tourism is analyzed. In addition, the relationship between tourism involvement and tourists’ happiness and the role of tourism industry agglomeration on the high-quality development of tourism economy are also studied, providing strong support for the high-quality development of tourism.

This special issue presents the findings of several studies on rural revitalization and the high-quality development of culture and tourism based on different disciplinary fields. These studies are primarily distinguished by several characteristics. Firstly, the research areas of this special issue are rich and the research objects are diversified. The research areas cover the whole country, regions (Beijing-Tianjin- Hebei region), provinces and cities (Hunan Province, Zhejiang Province, Xi’an City, Changsha City, and Dujiangyan City), districts and counties (suburban districts such as the Daxing and Tongzhou districts in Beijing, and Qixingguan District in Bijie City), rural villages (Zhangguying Village), and scenic spots (Longji Terraced Scenic Area in Guangxi); and the objects of the research involve tourism businesses, village residents, and travelers. Secondly, the research methods are diverse, scientific, reasonable and innovative, mainly including the entropy weight method, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, Delphi method, analytic hierarchy process, case analysis method, structural equation model, in-depth interviews, literature analysis, nearest neighbor distance, kernel density estimation, questionnaire survey method, semi-structured interviews, composite index method, DEMATEL method, normal cloud model, geographic probe model, spatial measurement model and other methods. These studies have constructed a variety of evaluation systems and models such as the coupling coordination model, comprehensive development level model, RMPP evaluation index system, RTI location choice factor system, the tourist attraction development resilience evaluation index system, the research and study travel safety resilience evaluation index system, the rural settlement vulnerability evaluation index system and others. Thirdly, the research theory perspectives are diversified, covering complexity theory, value co-creation theory, attribution theory, norm activation theory, resilience theory, S-O-R theory, constructive-developmental theory, and others, which involve diversified disciplines such as geography, sociology, management, psychology, and many others.

The findings in this special issue will aid in the scientific understanding of the research on high-quality development of culture and tourism, as well as rural revitalization. Readers are given specific references to help them comprehend the new dynamics of this research, and the results should encourage more academic colleagues to discuss and pay attention to these topics. Meanwhile, the articles in this issue show that China is experiencing rapid development in its research on rural tourism and revitalization from the perspective of high-quality cultural tourism development. While some successes have been achieved, there are still some unresolved issues, such as the localized theory of the relevant fields which has not yet matured (Tang et al., 2023a), and the research case sites are relatively singular. In order to further drive the maturation in the research on rural revitalization and the high-quality development of culture and tourism, future research in this field should focus on the following key issues. Firstly, strengthen the localized theoretical research, follow the national strategies such as the “strategy of invigorating China through science and education”, “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals”, grasp the new opportunities, deal with the new challenges, and explore the new paths, so as to provide theoretical guidance and practical innovation for research on rural revitalization and the high-quality development of culture and tourism (Tang et al., 2023b). Secondly, expand the research areas and perspectives, pay attention to the differences in spatial characteristics of China’s rural development, further refine and deepen the horizontal and vertical research on rural tourism in different regions of China, and form a replicable and applicable theoretical and practical model. Thirdly, further deepen and enrich the research content, focusing on aspects such as the deep integration of rural culture and tourism (Tang et al., 2023a), digital culture and tourism, stakeholders in rural tourism, culture and tourism industry development and common wealth, urban-rural integrated development and rural culture and tourism, green consumption in urban and rural tourism destinations (Tang et al., 2023d), rural cultural inheritance and tourism high-quality development (Tang et al., 2023c), and others.