ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Urban Economics
Spatial Transfer from Urban to Rural Areas? Characteristics and Evolutionary Drivers of Urban-rural Spatiotemporal Clusters of Peer-to-peer Accommodation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Nanfang College Guangzhou, Guangzhou, China
- 2City University of Macau, Taipa, Macao, SAR China
- 3Guangdong University of Science and Technology, Dongguan, China
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With the urbanization and transformation of consumption styles, the peer-to-peer accommodation (P2PA) industry has emerged to provide more convenient and efficient options for tourists and to inject new vitality into urban economies. This study investigates the spatiotemporal clustering and evolutionary drivers of P2PA in urban and rural areas of Shanghai. Spatial autocorrelation techniques and the Multi-scale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) model are adopted to analyze the Airbnb data from 2016 to 2021 to identify the spatial characteristics of P2PA. The results indicate that high-value P2PA clusters in the city center are gradually breaking apart and shifting to rural areas especially in Pudong New Area. The shift from urban to rural areas makes great contributions to form an integrated urban-rural tourism system. Specifically, the spatial distribution of P2PA in Shanghai exhibits a vertical clustering pattern shaped by resource-oriented and demand-oriented mechanisms. Cultural tourism attractions significantly promote P2PA distribution, while business demands and transportation facilities have inhibiting effects. To support the sustainable growth of P2PA and tourism economy, the government should implement integrated Urban-Rural planning to build distinctive P2PA clusters based on local tourism resource, deepen local industrial linkages to develop new consumption formats and extend industrial chains, encourage practitioners to integrate intangible cultural heritage and folk customs with modern tourism needs, and establish a window for cultural display and inheritance with P2PA model.
Keywords: peer-to-peer accommodation, Shanghai, Spatial distribution mechanisms, spatiotemporal clustering, Urban-rural tourism system
Received: 10 Oct 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Shen, Zhang and Cui. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Wenjing Cui
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