SRICH Expansion Outpaced Tourism Alignment in Wuling Mountain Counties
Sports-related intangible cultural heritage and tourism have begun to move in the same direction across China’s Wuling Mountain Area, but not at the same speed. A county-level analysis of 71 administrative units shows that officially recognized SRICH records expanded between 2010 and 2024 even as the relationship between heritage endowment and tourism development remained uneven, spatially clustered, and only partially synchronized.
The central pattern is easy to state and harder to manage in policy. Heritage coverage widened, tourism intensified, and the two systems rarely advanced in lockstep.
The study tracked the administrative distribution of recognized SRICH records in 2010, 2015, 2019, and 2024, then paired those patterns with county-level tourism development indices. Geographical concentration, kernel density estimation, and standard deviational ellipses mapped where the heritage records clustered and how their spatial configuration shifted over time. Entropy weighting, coupling coordination analysis, relative-balance diagnosis, and Moran’s I were then used to evaluate how closely tourism development moved with the heritage base. The result was a layered picture: more counties entered the official heritage inventory after 2010, yet the core–periphery structure of tourism remained marked.
A Broader Heritage Footprint, but a Persistent Core–Periphery Tourism Pattern
SRICH coverage expanded while geographical concentration declined. In practical terms, the heritage record became less tightly packed in a few counties and more widely distributed across the region, even though the overall regional configuration remained broadly stable. County-represented density peaks increased, which suggests that recognized projects did not simply diffuse everywhere; they gathered in additional local hotspots while preserving the region’s wider spatial shape.
Tourism followed a different tempo. Development rose rapidly before 2019 and then more slowly after that point, yet the regional pattern still revolved around a core set of stronger counties. The study’s tourism index increased from 0.192 to 0.403 over the observed period, a sizable gain in relative terms, but the movement did not erase the gap between stronger tourism centers and counties remaining on the margins of development.
One figure drives home the structural shift. Among the observed change in tourism development, 62.2% was associated with counties that entered the official inventory after 2010. New inclusion in the heritage system therefore tracked with visible tourism gains, but the relationship was far from uniform across the region. Counties already covered by the baseline inventory improved their joint levels, yet relative balance changed little and SRICH-lagging counties remained the majority within that cohort.
Coordination Improved, but the Gap Between Subsystems Stayed Visible
The coupling coordination degree functions here as a comparative measure of the recorded joint levels of SRICH and tourism development. Across the baseline-covered counties, that measure moved upward as both subsystems strengthened. Even so, the balance between them improved only modestly. In some counties, tourism capacity advanced faster than heritage recognition or safeguarding capacity; in others, strong heritage endowment sat beside comparatively thin tourism infrastructure and service support.
This split matters because SRICH is not a passive resource. Traditional sports and recreational practices depend on bodily memory, repeated demonstration, collective participation, and the continuity of ritual or community performance. Once those practices are reduced to tourism products, the risk is not only simplification but a shift in interpretive authority away from heritage bearers and toward outside operators or market preferences. The observed mismatch between heritage recognition and tourism development fits that concern. Counties can possess cultural depth without matching service capacity, while tourism-intensive counties can grow faster than the heritage systems that give place-based meaning to their offerings.
A single metric cannot resolve those tensions. Coupling models describe relative alignment, not cultural vitality, community welfare, or sustainable practice. The study keeps that boundary visible rather than pretending otherwise.
Spatial Clustering Remained Strong Even as Local Hotspots Shifted
All three indices showed significant positive global spatial autocorrelation. In plain language, counties tended to resemble their neighbors rather than behave as isolated points. Heritage and tourism were therefore not randomly distributed across the Wuling Mountain Area; both followed spatial logic tied to adjacent administrative units, shared infrastructure, and broader regional development conditions.
Local clusters were another matter. After false discovery rate adjustment, sparse local clusters appeared, and none remained significant in 2024. The disappearance of stable local significance suggests that the regional pattern was not frozen in place, but it also points to limited concentration in a few enduring hot spots. The map changed, yet not in a way that produced strong, persistent local enclaves with robust statistical certainty at the end of the study period.
The pattern fits a region shaped by cross-provincial cultural continuity and county-level administrative fragmentation. Wuling Mountain spans Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing, and Guizhou, so cultural networks stretch across borders while recognition, funding, and tourism planning remain anchored in local jurisdictions. The result is a planning challenge familiar to any multi-jurisdictional region: heritage may be shared across space, but policy instruments are parceled out county by county.
County-Level Planning Needs to Track Divergent Trajectories
The policy implication is straightforward. Counties should not be treated as interchangeable containers of heritage and tourism capacity. Some need safeguarding support before tourism expansion accelerates further. Others need tourism planning that better fits the scale, form, and community logic of the heritage already present. Cross-provincial coordination is especially important in a corridor where cultural practices move across administrative boundaries more easily than budgets or governance authority.
The study’s strongest contribution is its insistence on county-level resolution. Provincial or prefectural summaries can flatten the differences that determine whether a heritage practice remains community-based or becomes mainly touristic. By separating spatial concentration from coupling coordination, the analysis shows two related but distinct realities: where recognized SRICH is clustered, and how far tourism development actually aligns with it.
The limitations are built into the indicators themselves. Official inventories capture formal recognition, not the full lived vitality of a practice. Coupling coordination measures compare subsystem indices, but they do not prove causation or guarantee cultural sustainability. Even so, the county-level evidence is clear enough to shape planning: heritage safeguarding and tourism development are moving together in parts of the Wuling Mountain Area, but the distance between them remains wide in many counties, and the places where they diverge deserve the closest attention.