Suitability Assessment Method of Red Tourism Development Using Geospatial and Social Humanity Data: A Case Study of Ruijin City, East China

Abstract

It is important to analyze the trend in land use changes and assess the suitability of resource development for protecting natural resources, developing ecological industries, and land use planning issues. Ruijin City is located in South Jiangxi and has abundant resources for red tourism development. By analyzing the landscape changes in land use and the spatial distribution characteristics of local red culture resources, a supervised machine learning-based prediction model was constructed to quantitatively assess the suitability of red tourism development in a geographic information system (GIS) and the R language environment using geographical, economical, and human-related datasets. The results revealed that: (i) the increasing of human activities and economic vitality provide a beneficial social environment for the development of tourism resources; (ii) highly concentrated red resources, or those with special significance, are conducive to developing red tourism resources; (iii) preferentially, central–eastern Ruijin was followed by the extension areas to peripheral towns, which are potentially suitable areas for the development of red scenic spots. Generally, the findings of this study were consistent with the conventional cognitions and lessons on tourism development, and the constructed evaluation system is expected to be promoted to similar research.