Tourist interest areas and spatial movement patterns on the qinghai-Tibet plateau based on dynamic trajectory similarity

Abstract

Tourist interest areas illustrate the spatial orientation of group decision-making in selecting tourism destinations amid evolving consumer preferences. By integrating tourist stay areas with OPTICS-optimized DBSCAN clustering techniques, this study identified tourist interest areas and analyzed their annual and spatial orientations. It further examined inter-annual and inter-monthly variations while generating trajectory movement maps to elucidate tourists' spatial movement patterns. The findings indicate that during the study period, tourist interest areas on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau transitioned from a scattered distribution around prominent scenic spots and popular cities to encompass non-scenic regions along primary traffic routes and border zones. These were concentrated along national and provincial highways within a 60 km radius at elevations between 3000 m and 4500 m. The frequency of inter-annual changes consistently increased as nodes evolved from isolated points into a high-frequency network. The variation in tourist spatial movement patterns serves as a dynamic response to tourist interest areas. This finding extends the applicability of the classical LCF in plateau regions, and based on this, this study innovatively proposed the Plateau Tourism Space Interaction Model. The results provide critical insights for optimizing spatial planning and developing world-class tourism destinations on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.