旅游地感知是旅游地理学重要的研究领域之一,“一带一路”倡议背景下,游客空间感知与地方想象研究对推动边疆生态旅游地品牌化建设,促进边疆“去边缘化”和旅游发展具有重要的理论和现实意义。以额济纳绿洲为例,综合集成内容分析法、社会网络分析法、文本分析法与社会访谈法,探讨了边疆生态旅游地游客空间感知意象特征与地方想象建构过程。结果表明：（1） 绿洲景观生态与自然风貌是生态旅游地空间感知中最主要的部分,其中,胡杨林在游客空间感知意象网络中居于核心位置,胡杨符号成为游客审美和消费偏好。（2） K-核分析发现,胡杨要素贯穿所有凝聚子群层次变化过程,胡杨景观及其延伸的社会文化意义是游客重点关注的内容。随着K-核级数增加,游客由着重关注绿洲胡杨森林景观向绿洲森林、地貌、水体等综合自然景观过渡,绿洲人文景观除黑城遗址和策克口岸外,其他较少受到游客青睐。（3） 基于边疆独特的景观符号、典型的地域符号和层累的文化符号,借助真实空间的具身体验和想象空间的文化建构,游客对额济纳绿洲展开丰富的生命想象、边塞想象与秘境想象,塑造出绿洲鲜明的地方意象。

Destination perception is one of the important research fields in tourism geography. In the context of “One Belt and One Road” initiative, the study on tourists’ spatial perception and the local imagination of frontier ecotourism destination is of important theoretical and practical significance to promote the branding of frontier ecotourism destination, frontier “de-marginalization” and tourism development. Industrialization and urbanization are least prominent in China’s frontier areas owing to its remote location, inconvenient transportation, and sparse population. As a result, various primitive landscape ecology and natural features have been preserved and have recently become popular ecotourism destination. Considering the Ejin Oasis, Inner Mongolia, China as an example, the characteristics of tourists’ spatial perception image and the construction process of the place imagination of frontier ecotourism destination were thoroughly explored via comprehensively integrating content analysis, social network analysis, text analysis, and social interview methods. Results show that: (1) Oasis landscape ecology and natural features were the most important parts of the spatial perception of ecotourism destination. Among them, the Populus euphratica forest occupied the core position in the tourists’ spatial perception image network, with the symbol of Populus euphratica becoming the aesthetic and consumption preference of tourists. (2) K-cores analysis revealed that Populus euphratica element dominated the level change process of all cohesive subgroups and its extended social and cultural significance constituted the primary tourist content. With the increase in the K-cores level, tourists shifted their focus from the oasis Populus euphratica forest landscape to an integrated natural landscape of oasis forest, namely, landform and water. Apart from the Heicheng ruins and Ceke port, the remaining oasis cultural landscapes were less popular among tourists. (3) Basing on the unique landscape, typical regional, and layered cultural symbols of the frontier and with the help of the embodied experience of the real space and the cultural construction of the imagination space, tourists experienced rich life, frontier, and mysterious imaginations of Ejin Oasis, thus creating a distinct place image of the oasis. Through the detailed analysis of the spatial perception image and local imagination construction of frontier ecotourism destination from the outside to the inside, this study enriched and supplemented the studies on the spatial perception of tourism destination. On the basis of the frontier spatial characteristics, the branding process of frontier ecotourism destination should be connected with the sacred tourism experience to remove the negative influence of marginal imagination.