Spatially Illustrating Leisure Agriculture: Empirical Evidence from Picking Orchards in China

In the context of rural revitalization strategies and humans' increasing leisure pursuit, leisure agriculture starts to act as a new engine of rural economic growth and industrial upgradation. Unraveling the agri-leisure developmental regularity from a spatial perspective facilitates urban-rural integration and poverty alleviation in rural regions. Given the lack of spatially analyzing agri-leisure (e.g., sightseeing picking orchards) especially at the macro-spatial scale (e.g., the national scale), this study aims to explore the spatiality of leisure agriculture and its fundamental driving mechanisms based on geo-visual (spatially visualizing) analytical tools looking at 20,778 picking orchards in China. Results show that: (1) Picking orchards are distributed in the form of clusters with striking disparity at multiple spatial scales; (2) Five spatial agglomerations are found involving the regions around Beijing and Tianjin, Shandong hinterland, Henan hinterland, the core district of the Yangtze Delta, and the core district of the Pearl River Delta; (3) The driving mechanisms are revealed, and the spatial pattern of picking orchards is found to be largely influenced by morphology, distance to central cities, traffic conditions, economic level, and tourism resources. This study is conducive to optimizing the spatial planning of rural eco-tourism towards sustainable agro-development.