Evaluation and Spatiotemporal Differentiation of Cultural Tourism Development Potential: The Case of the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Yellow River.

Cultural tourism development potential (CTDP) is the future value and supporting force of the environmental value, economic and social efficiency, innovation ability and supporting system of cultural tourism. At present, there are few relevant studies on CTDP, but the research results on the tourism development potential of cultural heritage are relatively rich, and the existing evaluation methods lack comprehensiveness, dynamics and visualization. Based on systems theory and sustainable development theory, this article attempts to innovate and collect time series data through the entropy method, multi-index comprehensive evaluation method, spatial kernel density estimation method, and centroid transferring model. The temporal and spatial evolution characteristics and the CTDP of 43 cities in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River are examined and analyzed. It is found that the CTDP in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River is divided into five levels; the overall potential intensity of the research area is small and has significant spatial differences; influenced by the time factor, the interaction and spatial correlation of within the research area are significant; the development of regional cultural tourism has strong regional dependence in the short range. The center of potential gradually moves to the geometric center. This study is significant for promoting the sustainable development of economic tourism in cradles of world civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]