Conceptualization and validation of place meaning in industrial heritage tourism destination: Q methodology and spatial analysis

Understanding how tourists construct place meaning is critical, yet existing research has largely treated place meaning as spatially uniform and analytically detached from destination environments. Hence, this study aimed to distinguish place-related concepts and to investigate the dimensions and spatial distribution of place meaning within industrial tourism. This study adopted a multi-method approach. Empirical data were collected at Jiayang National Mining Park, China. Q methodology was employed to identify patterns of tourists' subjective interpretations of the industrial heritage destination, yielding four shared configurations of place meaning (material-heritage, socio-historical, functional-experiential, and self-reflexive meaning) with a surface-to-depth structure. Then, measurements were validated through psychometric analysis. Lastly, spatial analysis was adopted to visualize and examine the differentiated spatial distribution of place meaning across 30 sites in an industrial destination. This study offers insights for industrial destination planning by highlighting how different spatial strategies activate distinct dimensions of place meaning for tourists.