The mental fatigue of rural homestay operators is of great significance to their performance as well as the sustainability of the rural tourism industry. Mental fatigue is a state of mind caused by consistently demanding cognitive activities. The mental health of rural homestay operators has been severely hit during the COVID-19, and they are in urgent need of finding a path to recovery. Based on value co-creation theory, this paper explores how rural homestay operators’ mental fatigue affects their performance under the moderating effects of government support and tourists’ participation. We conducted a questionnaire survey in the 19 rural tourist destinations of Nanjing, China, and collected a total of 201 questionnaires from the homestay operators. The results reveal that the operators’ mental fatigue has a negative effect on the performance of rural homestays. What’s more, tourists’ participation could moderate the relationship between operators’ mental fatigue and their performance. Although the moderating effects of government support are not significant, they can influence operators’ performance directly and indirectly. Through the value co-creation of operators, tourists, and government with the aim of improving the performance value of the rural homestay co-creation process, the operators’ mental fatigue could be alleviated and their performance restored. These findings can help us explore the recovery mechanism of rural homestays and promote the sustainable development of rural tourism in the post-COVID-19 period.

The technology acceptance preferences of elderly tourists is one of the important factors influencing their continuous use of tourism e-commerce platforms and promoting the sustainable development of tourism e-commerce platforms. The current tourism market continues to expand within the elderly population. Further, the internet has become the primary channel for tourists’ online consumption in the digital age. This study aims to explore the technology acceptance preferences of elderly tourists for tourism e-commerce platforms, considering active aging and its influence by constructing two adaptation to aging scenarios for tourism e-commerce platforms composed of technology acceptance attributes. Using experimental data from 94 elderly tourists in Nanjing, a mixed logit regression analysis was conducted to explore the characteristics and personalized differences in the respondents’ technology acceptance preferences while using tourism e-commerce platforms. The study found that information access, information understanding, information protection policy and privacy protection technology have a significant positive impact on the consumption preference of elderly tourists. Among them, in the scenario without adaptation to aging, the order of the variables which influence the consumption preferences of elderly tourists online is information access, privacy protection policy, information understanding and privacy protection technology, which reflects the current demand of elderly tourists for easy access to effective information and strong privacy protection. In the context of adaptation to aging, the order is privacy protection policy, information understanding, information access and privacy protection technology, which shows that in the context of improved information access and understanding, elderly people pay more attention to the privacy protection provided by the platform. Moreover, there is individual heterogeneity in elderly tourists’ preferences for the technology acceptance of tourism e-commerce platforms. With the aging population and the digital processes, exploring the influencing factors of elderly tourists’ internet technology acceptance preferences is helpful in promoting the sustainable development of tourism e-commerce platforms in the era of active aging, bridging the digital divide and providing decision support for the practice of an active aging strategy.