Integrating Agricultural and Ecotourism Development: A Crop Cultivation Suitability Framework Considering Tourists’ Landscape Preferences in Qinghai Province, China

Abstract

Ecotourism and agricultural development have been proven to have synergistic effects, although few studies have employed a spatial planning approach to incorporate tourism growth into crop cultivation planning. This study constructed a theoretical framework of environmental suitability—farmland accessibility—tourist’s landscape preferences for crop cultivation planning to link regional agriculture and ecotourism development. The spatial planning of rapeseed cultivation in Qinghai Province was chosen as a case study. The main research methods include an environmental suitability analysis based on remote sensing and Maxent modeling, a farmland accessibility analysis based on a GIS platform, and a landscape preference questionnaire survey of tourists. According to the survey’s findings, almost 80% of tourists thought rapeseed flowers enhanced the beauty of natural landscapes. This demonstrated the enormous potential of rapeseed fields for fostering ecotourism. Based on environmental factors, the optimum region for rapeseed cultivation covered 5.38% of the study area, or roughly 6327 km2. The comprehensive optimum zone, which encompassed both agricultural accessibility and environmental suitability, was equal to 12.63% of the study area’s farming area, or around 929 km2. This study’s crop cultivation suitability framework can integrate agricultural and ecotourism development, with substantial implications for achieving coordinated economic, social, and environmental development.