Spatial Differentiation and Driving Mechanisms of County-Level Tourism Accessibility in Gansu Based on Multi-Dimensional Travel Cost Perspective

Tourism accessibility is an important indicator for assessing the coordinated development of transport and tourism. Using counties and districts in Gansu Province as the units of analysis, this study developed a three-dimensional evaluation framework comprising temporal accessibility, economic accessibility, and balanced accessibility, based on real-world travel data between county and district centres and China’s A-rated tourist attractions obtained from the Amap API. Spatial autocorrelation analysis, the Geographical Detector, the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM), and Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) were employed to systematically investigate the spatial patterns and driving mechanisms of tourism accessibility in Gansu Province. The results indicate that: (1) tourism accessibility exhibits significant spatial clustering, with high-value areas primarily concentrated in the Hexi Corridor and low-value areas mainly distributed in the mountainous regions of central and southern Gansu; (2) distance to the provincial capital, elevation, and the number of adjacent counties constitute the core determinants of tourism accessibility, while interactions among factors generally exhibit bi-factor enhancement or nonlinear enhancement effects; and (3) tourism accessibility exhibits significant spatial spillover effects and spatial heterogeneity, with the effects of different driving factors varying considerably across space. The findings provide a theoretical basis for optimising tourism transport and promoting balanced regional tourism development in Gansu Province.