Abstract: Tourism awareness is one of the factors controlling decisionmaking for tourists, and also is an important means for tourism destinations to obtain the potential tourists. This paper took the tourism awareness of the inbound popular tourism cities in China as research content, took the perspective of cognitive appraisal of inbound tourists，and supported by a large sample survey data of empirical investigation of inbound tourists, and used Moran index and correlation analysis to test and analysis the spatial distribution characteristic and corelationship on the awareness of the inbound popular tourism cities in China. The spatial distribution results indicated as follows: The awareness of the inbound popular tourism cities had the attribute of positive spatial autocorrelation, and there had the type and level of spatial distribution for it. The correlation test results indicated as follows: the nearer, the correlation of the awareness of the inbound popular tourism cities is higher; coastal inbound popular tourism cities have high relationship; the awareness of the inbound popular tourism cities has an obvious correlation for type or level; the focus attention of international tourism city with high correlation between other cities. In spatial distribution, wellknown tourist destination with the type and level of cognitive differences, there are four basic characteristics of specific distribution of spatial structure ‘highhigh’ concentration city: Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an; ‘lowlow’ concentration city: Guilin, Chengdu, Nanjing, Dalian and Hangzhou; high value city surrounded by the low city: Kunming, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Urumqi and Dunhuang; Lhasa having no a local spatial autocorrelation. 14 inbound wellknown tourist destinations were tested by using linear regression method for the relationship between the cities. Overall, on the individual cognitive level, all the 14 inbound tourist destination cities involved in this study, their own popularity are positively correlated: Inbound tourism hot spot area adjacent to the city there is a high degree of awareness of relevant characteristics; wellknown tourist destination cities in the coastal entry high correlation characteristics; inbound tourist destination city with a clear awareness of the type or leveldependent features; the focus of attention of international inbound tourism hot spot cities and other cities there is a high correlation between the features. The basic results showed as follows: (1)overall, the popularity of China’s inbound tourist destination has a positive spatial autocorrelation property, which indicated that the wellknown tourist destination cities enhance the visibility of the surrounding neighboring cities and have driven with a significant radiation effect. In part, China’s inbound tourist destinations there are four wellknown spatial distribution features, namely ‘highhigh’ concentration of city, ‘lowlow’ concentration of the city, high value city surrounded by low and cities have no spatial autocorrelation. (2) results of relevance test showed that: inbound tourism hot spot area has a high degree of awareness of relevant characteristics with adjacent to the cities; coastal wellknown tourist destinations have highly correlation characteristics; inbound tourist destinations have a clear awareness of the relevant class characteristics; international focus inbound tourist destination cities have high correlation with other cities.

Key words: inbound tourism popular cities, awareness, tourist cognition, spatial correlation, China