Under the background of China's rural revitalization, improving visitors' attachment to rural tourism destinations has become an important path for rural areas to achieve sustainable development and revitalization. Therefore, this study examined the formation mechanism of visitors' place attachment in the context of China's rural tourism. Based on the literature of emotional solidarity and place attachment, perception of place warmth was considered the underlying mechanism for the effect of emotional solidarity on visitors' place attachment to rural destinations. Specifically, we hypothesized that: 1) visitors will show higher place attachment to rural areas when they perceive high emotional solidarity with the local residents (H1); 2) such an effect is mediated by higher perception of place warmth (H2); and 3) the effects of emotional solidarity on visitors' place attachment and place warmth will be mediated by visitors' self-construal. Compared with independent self-construal visitors, the perception of place warmth and rural attachment are more significantly affected by the emotional solidarity between interdependent self-construal visitors and rural residents (H3a and H3b). Three separate scenario imagination experiments were conducted to test the aforementioned hypotheses. Results from these experiments supported all hypotheses across scenarios. This study contributes to tourism scholarship by expanding the understanding of the causal relationship between the two important constructs of emotional solidarity and place attachment. We concluded that there exists a two-way causal relationship between emotional solidarity and place attachment depending on scenarios and subjects. This study also provides practical implications for rural destinations to improve visitors' attachment to the countryside with the help of emotional solidarity and rural warmth attributes.

Modern new media technology tools represented by Tiktok provide an important means for "New Farmer" to participate in rural cultural tourism and rural revitalization. However, existing research had paid little attention to the spatial distribution characteristics of this group, and there was a lack of reasonable and objective evaluation of the cultural tourism transformation potential of "New Farmer" anchors. Based on the data of Tiktok "New Farmer" anchors on the Chanmama website, this study comprehensively measured the rural cultural tourism transformation potential of "New Farmer" anchors from three aspects: directivity, recognition, and dissemination and used hotspot analysis to analyze the spatial differentiation of the characteristics of "New Farmer" anchors and their cultural tourism transformation potential. It further explored the cultural tourism driving mode of "New Farmer" anchors, revealing the regional differences in their cultural tourism transformation potential from a spatial perspective to provide a reference for better leveraging the cultural tourism driving capabilities of the "New Farmer" anchors. The results show that: 1) "New Farmer" anchors exhibited obvious characteristics of more in the south and fewer in the north, with more males and fewer females. There were significant differences in the spatial pattern of anchor scale and cultural tourism transformation potential, and the cultural tourism transformation potential of Henan and Shandong, was very limited. 2) The southwestern region, especially Sichuan and Chongqing, had prominent advantages in terms of the number and scale of "New Farmer" anchors, live streaming sales, and potential for cultural tourism transformation. 3) Less than 40% of ordinary media users had the potential for cultural tourism transformation. Although the number of "rural guardians" was limited, they brought significant potential for cultural tourism transformation. 4) There were significant regional differences in the advantageous characteristics of rural cultural tourism transformation potential. "New Farmer" anchors in the southwest had strong cultural tourism promotion concepts, and their short videos showed higher degree of direction towards cultural tourism content. The cultural and tourism videos in the southeastern region showed significant advantages in recognition and dissemination, and the content quality of cultural and tourism videos was even better. 5) The "New Farmer" anchors with different identities were different in terms of creative motivation, narrative mode, and narrative content. Their driving mode of cultural tourism could be divided into grassroots cadres-direct driving, rural guardians-indirect driving, and ordinary personal media users-potential driving. In general, Tiktok "New Farmer" anchors, characterized by individual creation, had played a significant role in breaking through the differences in the eastern, central, and western regions of China, and promoted equal development between the central and western regions and the eastern region. However, the significant differences between the south and the north and the limited potential for cultural tourism transformation still need further attention.

The main purpose of establishing a rural tourism demonstration county is to promote the development of rural economy and increase farmers' employment and income. In recent years, with the continuous expansion of rural tourism development scale, the sustainable development of regional social-ecological systems is threatened. Adaptation is one of the key components of a social-ecological system, which enables the system to respond to environmental changes and threats in advance, and make timely response to changes and threats. In this study, we took Wuyuan County and Ejin Horo Banner as the case study sites. First, based on the social-ecological system theory, an evaluation system of the effect of rural tourism demonstration counties was established, farmers and pastoralists in rural tourism areas were included in the evaluation as the main stakeholders of policy interests, and the external policy interference caused by the establishment of rural tourism demonstration counties was taken as the adaptive object. The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method was used to comprehensively evaluate the effect on the adaptability of participation in tourism of farmers and pastoralists in rural tourism areas. Second, the case study sites were divided into two types: scenic spot-dependent type and ecological leisure agriculture type, and the farmers and pastoralists were divided into three types: tourism specialized type, tourism participating type, and pure farmers and pastoralists. The effects on the adaptability of participation in tourism of two types of rural tourist sites and three types of farmers and pastoralists were compared and evaluated. The results show that: 1) The overall effect of the establishment of rural tourism demonstration counties on the adaptability of farmer participation in tourism has reached a fair level. 2) The evaluation results of tourism adaptability of farmers and pastoralists dependent on scenic spots and ecological leisure agriculture are as follows: scenic spot-dependent > ecological leisure agriculture. 3) The evaluation results of the adaptability of tourism specialized, tourism participating, and pure farming and pastoral households' participation in tourism are as follows: tourism specialized > tourism participating > purely agricultural and pastoral households.