Authors: Li Tao, Nutteera Phakdeephirot
ABSTRACT: Against the backdrop of the ongoing construction of the Chengdu Chongqing economic circle, the central urban area has become an important window for observing the quality of urban leisure tourism. This article takes 6 central urban areas in Chengdu and 9 central urban areas in Chongqing as the research scope. Based on 450 tourist perception questionnaires, a seven-dimensional development evaluation scale and a five-dimensional constraint factor scale are constructed. Reliability and exploratory factor analysis, inter group difference test, hierarchical regression, Bootstrap mediation test, and moderation effect model are used for analysis. Research has found that the average perceived development of leisure tourism in the central urban area of Chengdu is 3.890, which is higher than the 3.691 in the central urban area of Chongqing; The perceived constraint factor in Chongqing is 3.381, higher than Chengdu’s 3.004. Services, management, information, policies, and environmental constraints all have a significant negative impact on development evaluation, with information constraints and environmental constraints playing a stronger role. Restrictive factors play a partial mediating role between urban type and development perception. The frequency of travel can buffer the negative impact of constraining factors, but this buffering is mainly reflected in the dimensions of information and environment. Research shows that the differences in the central urban areas of Chengdu and Chongqing are not only due to differences in resource endowment but also reflect the degree of matching between service organization, information supply, environmental governance, and tourist experience. Based on this, this article proposes suggestions from four aspects: deepening the quality of Chengdu, experience translation in Chongqing, interconnection of Chengdu Chongqing rules, and differentiated services for tourists.
Keywords: Chengdu Chongqing Economic Circle; Central urban area; Leisure tourism; Perceptual evaluation; Restrictive factors; Travel frequency.