Spatial patterns and driving factors of online attention to national night cultural tourism consumption agglomeration zones in China based on multisource data

The nighttime economy has become an important policy tool for urban renewal in China by extending activity after dark and supporting service-intensive consumption. This study examines public attention to the National Night Cultural Tourism Consumption Agglomeration Zones (NNCTCAZs), a government-designated program that provides a nationwide basis for comparing cities and zone types. We construct a composite online attention index for 345 NNCTCAZs by integrating signals from six digital platforms, including Baidu Index, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Dianping, Ctrip, and Mafengwo. We combine GIS-based spatial analysis with an optimal parameters-based geographical detector (OPGD) and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to identify the dominant factors associated with online attention, their interactions, and spatial heterogeneity. Online attention concentrates in four urban regions: the Yangtze River Delta, the Bohai Rim, the Pearl River Delta, and the Chengdu–Chongqing area, forming a four-core structure that extends along intercity corridors and declines toward western China. Transportation accessibility and local service conditions outperform population and macroeconomic size in explaining attention. Restaurants, intracity public transport, and shopping facilities reinforce high-speed rail accessibility, while climate-related variables show weaker and more spatially uneven associations. Spatial heterogeneity shows stronger associations with service density and intracity mobility in eastern cores, whereas climate coefficients remain limited and context dependent in emerging regions. Together, these results indicate a recurring coupling pattern in which convenient arrival and distinctive consumption scenes reinforce each other and provide a diagnostic basis for differentiated governance that aligns evening connectivity with locally appropriate scenes.