Enhancing transboundary natural tourism resources governance: unveiling the spatial pattern and its influencing factors

Tourism resources that span provincial boundaries in China play a pivotal role in regional development, yet effective governance poses persistent challenges. This study addresses this issue by constructing a comprehensive database of transboundary natural tourism resources (TNTR) through amalgamation of diverse data sources. Utilizing the Getis-Ord Gi*, kernel density estimation, and geographical detectors, we scrutinize the spatial patterns of TNTR, focusing on both named and unnamed entities, while exploring the influencing factors. Our findings reveal 7883 identified TNTR in China, with mountain tourism resources emerging as the predominant type. Among provinces, Hunan boasts the highest count, while Shanghai exhibits the lowest. Southern China demonstrates a pronounced clustering trend in TNTR distribution, with the spatial arrangement of biological landscapes appearing more random compared to geological and water landscapes. Western China, characterized by intricate terrain, exhibits fewer TNTR, concurrently unveiling a significant presence of unnamed natural tourism resources. Crucially, administrative segmentation influences TNTR development, generating disparities in regional goals, developmental stages and intensities, and management approaches. In response to these variations, we advocate for strengthening the naming of the unnamed transboundary tourism resources, constructing a geographic database of TNTR for government and establishing a collaborative management mechanism based on TNTR database. Our research contributes to elucidating the intricate landscape of TNTR, offering insights for tailored governance strategies in the realm of cross-provincial tourism resource management.