Spatiotemporal Correlation between Agglomeration of Homestay and Environmental Field: Insights from Wuyuan, China

Regional clustering has become a distinctive feature of the homestay industry in terms of spatial distribution in many countries. However, identifying and quantifying the advantageous locations suitable for the agglomeration of the homestay industry at the micro-scale is still in the exploratory stage. Therefore, with the support of multi-source data and the spatial entropy weight superposition method, drawing on concepts from physics such as gravitational and magnetic fields, and based on relevant location theories, the environmental field strength and its quantitative model are proposed to evaluate micro-locations suitable for homestay development. Finally, a case study was conducted in Wuyuan, China. The results show that the homestay industry is mainly distributed along traffic lines and rivers, which is greatly affected by tourism resources and rural settlements, and the degree of agglomeration is gradually increasing; The environmental field strength is closely related to the accessibility of infrastructure and the development of tourism resources, and the overall structure tends to be networked, polycentric and “core-periphery”; there is a positive linear correlation between the distribution of homestay industry and environmental field strength. This study provides a basis for optimising decision-making related to the sustainable planning and site-selection of tourism destinations and the homestay industry.