Research on Strategies to Accelerate the Development of Rural Sports Tourism in Hainan under the Free Trade Port Background

Abstract Against the backdrop of upgrading health demands, the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port, and the establishment of a national sports tourism demonstration zone, rural sports tourism has become a key lever for both the transformation and upgrading of Hainan’s tourism industry and the implementation of rural revitalization. Although Hainan enjoys high-quality tropical ecological conditions and rich ethnic cultural resources, it still faces multiple constraints, including insufficient resource development, product homogeneity, lagging infrastructure and shortages of professional talent. Based on questionnaire surveys conducted in 28 typical villages in Hainan (valid samples, n = 568) and in-depth interviews in 12 villages, this study employs factor analysis to construct an evaluation model and extracts five common factors—“government support,” “enterprise management,” “locational environment,” “resource characteristics,” and “consumption characteristics”—with a cumulative variance contribution rate of 78.3%. The results show that the “government support” factor has the highest variance contribution (32.6%), significantly exceeding that of “enterprise management” (18.5%) and “locational environment” (15.2%), highlighting the dominant role of government in the development of rural sports tourism. On this basis, the paper proposes countermeasures from both governmental and enterprise perspectives, including improving policies, regulations and planning systems, strengthening infrastructure and talent cultivation, optimizing spatial layouts, and fostering characteristic products and market linkages, thereby constructing a collaborative development framework in which government plays a leading role and enterprises actively participate. The study provides theoretical support and practical pathways for the integrated development of rural sports tourism and rural revitalization in Hainan.