Spatial Heterogeneity and Influencing Factors of the Resilient Cultural Landscape of Great Wall Villages: A Case Study of Chicheng County, China

Great Wall villages are living cultural landscapes within a linear heritage corridor, yet they face growing pressures from population decline, rural hollowing, uneven development, and tourism-related transformation. This study evaluates the cultural landscape resilience of 20 Great Wall villages in Chicheng County, China. A Cultural Landscape Resilience Index (CLRI) was constructed from three dimensions: resistance, recovery, and learning capacity. The AHP-CRITIC method was used to determine indicator weights, while spatial autocorrelation analysis, principal component analysis (PCA), and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) were applied to identify the spatial pattern of CLRI and the multiscale effects of its influencing factors. The results show that CLRI was generally low and spatially uneven. Villages with relatively high resilience were mainly concentrated near the county seat and major transportation corridors, whereas many villages along the Great Wall corridor showed lower resilience levels. MGWR results revealed clear spatial heterogeneity in the influencing factors. Heritage revitalization and social development features, heritage preservation and protection, tourism development and utilization, and village patterns and collaborative heritage protection were positively associated with CLRI. In contrast, the diversity of rural village landscapes and the strength of the human-land relationship showed negative associations with CLRI. Heritage revitalization and social development features and rural village landscape diversity operated at relatively broad spatial scales, whereas heritage preservation and protection and tourism development and utilization exhibited stronger local variation. The findings demonstrate that improving the resilience of Great Wall village cultural landscapes requires spatially differentiated conservation and development strategies, including strengthened heritage protection, coordinated conservation of village patterns and heritage elements, context-sensitive tourism development, and improved public services and development opportunities in less resilient villages.