The Impact of Transportation Accessibility on Tourism Economic Resilience Based on GWRF: A Case Study of the Yellow River Basin, China

Transportation plays a fundamental role in tourism development, serving as the critical link between tourism demand and supply. China’s domestic demand-oriented strategy has positioned tourism as an important driver of economic recovery during the post-COVID-19 transition period, highlighting the urgent need to strengthen tourism system resilience. Tourism economic resilience is measured via the entropy-weighted Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method, transportation accessibility is quantified using a composite index, and a Geographically Weighted Random Forest (GWRF) model is applied across 73 prefecture-level cities in the Yellow River Basin to map spatial patterns and examine the association between transportation accessibility and tourism economic resilience. The results reveal: (1) pronounced spatial disparities in both tourism resilience and accessibility, displaying a clear “core–periphery” pattern; (2) strong spatial coupling between high resilience and high accessibility in the east, and low–low clusters in the west (e.g., Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan); and (3) a relatively strong association between transportation accessibility and tourism resilience, particularly in supporting recovery, adaptability, and renewal capacity. Other influential factors include tourist density, openness to external markets, and industrial structure. This study provides a quantitative foundation for understanding the spatially heterogeneous associations of transport infrastructure with tourism system resilience and offers both theoretical insights and practical guidance for formulating regionally differentiated, transport-led policy strategies to foster sustainable tourism development in river-basin economies.