Abstract:

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.

Key words: frontier ecotourism destination, spatial perception, place imagination, placeness, Ejin Oasis