Development Characteristics and Evolution Mechanism of Homestay Agglomeration in Mogan Mountain, China

Abstract

The homestay business has contributed to the development of the tourism industry, and it has revitalized tourism resources and boosted the tourism economy. This article takes the Mogan Mountain homestay agglomeration of Yangtze River Delta, the most developed and actively invested in business in the industry, as a research site focus to discuss the recent trends in the Chinese homestay business. Standard deviational ellipse analysis, spatial analysis of nearest-neighbor, and density are empirically tested with the data from the inn/homestay channel of Qunar.com, which is a widely acclaimed website with high page views. Based on the above researches, this paper uses the standard deviation ellipse analysis, the nearest neighbor analysis, and the kernel density estimation analysis method to explore the development characteristics of the Mogan Mountain homestay agglomeration. Combined with the Butler tourist destination life cycle model, it can be concluded that the Mogan Mountain homestay agglomeration area experienced a stage of initial development (2007–2011) and rapid development (2012–2015) and now is in a mature development stage (2016 up to now). This study proposes five actors: physical geographical conditions, traffic location conditions, tourism self-organization mechanism, policy influence, and community residents’ willingness to develop and significantly drive the evolution of Mogan Mountain homestay agglomeration. The formation and evolution of the Mogan Mountain homestay agglomeration are the results of the accumulation of resource-driven effect, scale effect, and differentiation effect at different stages. The unique organization and incentive mechanism promote regional sustainable development.