Heritage tourism integration patterns: MaxEnt analysis of China’s Yellow River Basin

Abstract Cultural practices follow predictable spatial laws analogous to biological distributions. Using Maximum Entropy modeling on 1042 heritage sites across China’s Yellow River Basin, we demonstrate that anthropogenic land use alone accounts for 86.9% of heritage distribution—exceeding all natural factors combined. This reveals a fundamental shift: cultural geography has decoupled from physical geography in the Anthropocene. Heritage tends to concentrate at intermediate development levels, contradicting both preservationist and developmentalist assumptions. Stark regional disparities emerge: eastern provinces achieve heritage-tourism synergy (coupling >0.65) through agglomeration economies, while western regions remain disconnected (<0.28) despite richer cultural resources. We identify 34 orphaned heritage clusters—representing both conservation failures and untapped potential. The model’s exceptional accuracy (AUC = 0.952) demonstrates that ecological frameworks can effectively model cultural patterns, transforming heritage management from place-based preservation to system-based sustainability. These findings establish quantitative principles for cultural persistence, offering transferable insights for river corridors worldwide.