Fitting relationships and policy insights into the high-quality integrated development of culture and tourism industries in China

High-quality integrated development of culture and tourism is of great significance in building a new development pattern of the two industries. Based on the system theory, this paper constructs an evaluation index system for the development of culture and tourism industries from four dimensions of "elements-structure-function-environment", and explores the spatial and temporal variations of the development level of high-quality integration of and cultural and tourism industries in 30 provincial-level regions in China from 2013 to 2022 by using the comprehensive evaluation model of fitness, Moran's I index and hot spot analysis, and examines the grouping paths to achieve high-quality integration of cultural and tourism development through fsQCA analysis. The results show that: (1) China's cultural and tourism industry development indexes show a fluctuating growth, and first increase and then decrease, respectively, both showing the spatial and temporal characteristics of "increase in the south and decrease in the north". (2) China's high-quality integrated development of culture and tourism presents a spatial pattern of "high in the southeast and low in the northwest", with high-adaptation and high-match types mainly concentrated in East China, and low-adaptation and low-match types mostly found in Southwest China, South China and Northeast China. (3) The development of high-quality integration of culture and tourism in China is characterised by 'multiple concurrency', with circularity and openness being one of the main core conditions for achieving high-quality integration of culture and tourism in multiple stages, and coordination, ecological civilisation, and scientific and technological innovation playing an important driving role in different stages. China should use policy coordination, integrated layout and comprehensive development as a means of governance, and benchmarking, collaborative and combined development as a policy guide to continuously promote the high-quality integrated development of the culture and tourism industries.