Sustainable Development of Ice and Snow Tourism—Theory & Empirical Studies: Preface

Abstract

The Beijing Winter Olympics brought a historical miracle to the development of China's ice and snow tourism. It is both an opportunity and a challenge to reap the extra dividends of the times and to develop China's ice and snow tourism. By selecting 18 academic papers, this special issue deeply discusses the status quo and the future measures of ice and snow tourism in China from three aspects: ice and snow tourism development and management, the ice and snow tourism experience and its influencing factors, and ice and snow tourism impact assessment. Moreover, one part entitled “Tourism Culture and Ecotourism” has been set up to emphasize those cutting-edge research topics. It is worth mentioning that this issue is in-depth and has profound connotations. First of all, the research area ranges from national to regional to the city-level, including both longitudinal and horizontal research. In additon, the research methods are practical, innovative, and at the frontier of scientific research, and include industrial correlation analysis methods, kernel density, spatial autocorrelation and other geospatial analysis methods, content analysis methods, sentiment analysis methods, structural equation models, Delphi methods, spatial statistics methods, geographic detector method and many others. In general, this special issue combines qualitative research with quantitative research, provides a variety of theoretical perspectives such as perceived value theory, institutional evolution theory, etc., and builds various useful models like the pre-competition evaluation model for ice and snow tourism heritage, the consumption skill-travel radius decision-making influence model under the moderating effect of the ski resort comprehensive leisure environment, the evaluation model of the suitability of glacier tourism resource development, the model of the relationship between tourists' experience value and loyalty in the context of ice and snow tourism, among others. These studies are expected to provide theoretical and practical guidance for the development of ice and snow tourism in the post-Winter Olympics era, and help ice and snow tourism develop in a sustainable and high-quality direction.