AccScience Publishing / JCAU / Volume 6 / Issue 3 / DOI: 10.36922/jcau.2481
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A study on optimizing public spaces in rural heritage tourist sites from spatial perception: The case of Jinggang historic town

Miran He1 Hongtao Liu1*
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1 Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism 2024, 6(3), 2481 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.2481
Submitted: 19 December 2023 | Accepted: 29 February 2024 | Published: 23 May 2024
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

The development of cultural and rural tourism has fostered the expansion of heritage sites while concurrently presenting challenges such as resource wastage and cultural degradation. Optimizing spatial use requires a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics inherent to these sites. An emerging trend involves the integration of human perception technology into spatial perception research. Thus, to examine the correlation between alterations in physical and visual environments, tourists’ perceived changes, and primary influencing elements in rural heritage tourism sites, Jinggang – a historic and cultural town in Changsha, Hunan province, China – was selected as the research site. A comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis was conducted by integrating physical environment data from public spaces. These data include air temperature (Ta), relative humidity (RH), wind speed (WS), equivalent sound pressure level (ESPL), visual environment data (including green view index [GVI], sky view index [SVI], road and pavement view index (R&PVI), and construction view index [CVI]), along with biosensing data (level of stress [LS]) collected from tourists. The findings indicate the following: (i) the LS of the public space in Jinggang falls within the normal range but remains generally high, with the humanistic landscape, dominated by traditional architecture, scoring higher than the natural landscape; (ii) regarding spatial perception, the quantity of physical environment elements influencing LS surpasses that of visual environment elements, and the most relevant indicators, including ESPL, R&PVI, and CVI, all contribute to tourists’ LS; and (iii) ESPL significantly influences LS within the environment domain, where higher environmental noise decibels correspond to tourists’ increased LS. The study concludes that historic towns possess distinct characteristics as types of rural heritage tourism sites. This study provides valuable insights into enhancing spatial environmental quality and promoting an appealing and sustainable rural setting by implementing public space optimization strategies in rural heritage sites.

Keywords
Spatial perception
Rural heritage tourism
Public space optimization
Funding
This research was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No.2019YFC1520800) and the Subject of Science and Technology Department of Sichuan province (No.2019YFS0077).
Conflict of interest
All authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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