Linking Traditional Village Characteristics to Tourists’ Sense of Place: Evidence from Qingmuchuan

The homogenization of rural settlement landscapes and the erosion of place identity represent a global challenge in heritage conservation, yet existing studies have rarely incorporated both objective place characteristics and subjective place perceptions into a unified empirical model. This study deconstructs the placeness traits of traditional village landscapes and constructs a sense-of-place measurement model that integrates multidimensional placeness elements and their interactive effects, thereby advancing research from descriptive to explanatory approaches. Taking Qingmuchuan Traditional Village in southern Shaanxi as a case study, the research extracts place elements across four dimensions—environmental pattern, traditional architecture, service facilities, and folk culture—based on the DIKW hierarchy model and employs structural equation modeling to verify the inter-dimensional relationships and their influence mechanisms on sense of place. The results show that all four dimensions exert positive effects on sense of place, with effect sizes ranked as traditional architecture (0.73) > environmental pattern (0.68) > service facilities (0.63) > folk culture (0.54). All inter-dimensional correlations are positive, with the strongest coupling between environmental pattern and folk culture (0.52), reflecting the intrinsic “landscape–humanity” mutual construction logic. The mean perception score of landscape pattern was significantly lower than that of street scale, revealing a gap between historical value and perceived salience. Sense of place is jointly shaped by hierarchical pathways and synergistic interactions of multidimensional elements, and the value embodied in placeness elements needs to be translated into perception through effective interpretation and presentation. The findings offer a methodological reference for heritage conservation practices in traditional villages.