High-Speed Rail Network, Terrestrial Accessibility and the Tourism-Economy Spatial Nexus in Yunnan Province

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-996-4_7How to use a DOI?

Keywords

High-Speed Rail; Terrestrial Accessibility; Tourism Economy; Spatial Nexus; Yunnan

Abstract

To clarify how the high-speed rail (HSR) network reshapes terrestrial accessibility and the tourism-economy spatial network in China’s southwestern borderlands, this paper examines Yunnan Province’s 16 prefecture-level units at three critical time nodes—2015, 2019, and 2023. Using weighted average travel time(WATT), a modified gravity model, and a coupling-coordination approach, we systematically analyze the evolutionary characteristics and coupling relationship between land-transport accessibility and the tourism-economy spatial network. The results show that (1) provincial accessibility improved markedly between 2015 and 2023: WATT declined universally, with the steepest drops in Chuxiong and Yuxi; the spatial pattern remained “core-agglomerated & peripherally-decaying”, yet the high-value fringe continuously shrank as infrastructure expanded, indicating greater equality. (2) The tourism-economy network shifted from “weakly-linked & sparse” to “strongly-linked & clustered”: low-intensity ties diminished while high-intensity ties multiplied; total linkages rose across the board; Kunming’s hub dominance persisted, but cities such as Qujing climbed the hierarchy, transforming the province from a single-pole to a multi-pole system. (3) The accessibility–tourism-economy coupling advanced steadily: the number of “premium-coordinated” and “moderately-coordinated” cities grew while “seriously mismatched” cities dwindled; among the four coupling types, “advantage-synergy” cities acted as growth poles, “transport-potential” cities expanded, and “development-constrained” cities contracted. The findings furnish a scientific basis for optimising Yunnan’s tourism spatial layout and high-quality development, and offer reference for transport–tourism coupling research in other south-western border regions.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Maowei Yue
AU  - Dongsheng Li
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/15
TI  - High-Speed Rail Network, Terrestrial Accessibility and the Tourism-Economy Spatial Nexus in Yunnan Province
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 7th Management Science Informatization and Economic Innovation Development Conference (MSIEID 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 66
EP  - 80
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-996-4_7
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-996-4_7
ID  - Yue2026
ER  -