Coupling coordination between agricultural circular economy development and rural tourism development in China

Guangmin Yu, Yueling Yang, Suhao Fu, Yan Zhang, Huahua Chen, Guoping Tian, Xi Zhang

The coordinated development of the agricultural circular economy and rural tourism provides an important pathway for transforming rural ecological advantages, strengthening industrial resilience, and advancing rural revitalization. The agricultural circular economy improves resource-use efficiency and environmental quality, whereas rural tourism expands the channels through which rural ecology, culture, and agricultural products can realize economic value. Based on balanced panel data for 30 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities from 2011 to 2022, this study constructs two composite indicator systems and applies the entropy weight method and the coupling coordination model to examine their coordinated evolution. Province-level spatial visualizations, Global Moran's I, Getis-Ord Gi * hot-spot analysis, convergence diagnostics, and obstacle-factor diagnostics are used as supporting empirical tests. The results show that: (1) the agricultural circular economy index increased steadily, and the regional pattern gradually shifted from eastern leadership to catch-up in the central and western regions; (2) rural tourism development followed a phased path of growth, short-term shock, and recovery, indicating both market vitality and external vulnerability; (3) the two systems maintained a high coupling degree, but the coupling coordination value provided clearer discrimination of development quality, increasing significantly over time (annual trend coefficient = 0.0139, p < 0.001) and showing beta convergence across provinces (coefficient = −0.368, p < 0.001); (4) global Moran's I remained positive and significant under 999 permutation tests, and the Getis-Ord Gi * statistics further identified stable eastern hot spots and northwestern cold spots, suggesting weak global association but meaningful local clustering; and (5) output per unit of land, fertilizer output efficiency, agricultural value added, machinery output efficiency, and domestic tourist arrivals were the main obstacle factors. These findings indicate that policy should treat agricultural circular transformation and rural tourism as interdependent rural subsystems, prioritizing ecological value conversion, efficiency upgrading, tourism recovery, eastern spillovers, and targeted support for northwestern cold-spot regions.