The relationship between mobility and place-making in the context of tourism based on the new mobilities paradigm has been explored. Taking road travel on the Sichuan-Tibet Highway in southwestern China as a case, auto-ethnography and mobile ethnography are employed as the primary research methods, along with in-depth interviews, observations, personal travel log writings, and second-hand data collection. The question that how the space of road becomes a meaningful place through the mobility of road travellers thus has been answered. The mobility pattern of travellers is found to be stable in the time dimension and there are periodic repetitions in the spatial dimension, making ‘place-ballet’ on the highway. Accordingly, the road changes from space of flows into a place that is richly endowed with meaning. The travellers’ imagination of the road plays an important role in their interactions with the road, helping them making the meaning of the road. Multiple mobility practices shape the traveller’s ‘sense of the road’. In particular, the road is not a homogenous space in motion, but a ‘wrinkled’ one with numerous anchoring points. These moorings such as restaurants, hostels and landmarks shape travellers’ emotional connection with the road. Proactive or forced stillness not only affect the pace of the traveller’s mobility, but also broadens their understanding of the road and road travel. Therefore, the meaning attributed to the road is constructed by the mobility and the moorings. Accordingly, a comprehensive understanding of road travel, which is a distinct form of mobility practice, is generated. Moreover, the understanding of roads as a space of flows has been deepened and the significance of travel channels within mobility studies is highlighted. Finally, roads are regarded as a meaning place, which contributes to forming a ‘mobile concept’ of the place.

In heritage movement and tourism development, places are reconstructed in the contest between different forces for heritage attribution and representation. Since the ‘Kaiping Diaolou and Villages’ were successfully inscribed on the World Heritage List, the development of Kaiping as a heritage site has triggered much discussion. This study considers how ‘Diaolou Country,’ as signified by the Diaolou, has been built up as a new image of Kaiping. The study uses various methods including a literature review, observation and interviews to analyze the process of place construction in Kaiping in the context of heritage tourism, with a focus on the subjective feelings of residents. It finds that with the top-down push of the government, the Diaolou has been compulsorily established as a highly symbolized local token; however, the heritage movement as a government decision has received no response from folk forces, which to some extent goes against the original intention of place identification of local groups and fails to fully represent local cultural connotations. Tourism continually consumes the symbol, yet expands the blind zone out of the symbol, and in the pattern of sightseeing, the Diaolou has been shaped as a tourism landscape. As a hollow place, the Diaolou Country can accommodate outside ideas more easily. This study also argues that the in-depth role of heritage as a medium in place construction should give full play to the potential suggested by the background of heritage tourism development. Furthermore, the close ties between heritage and local groups should be valued.

In recent years, minsu (homestays), a non-standard tourist accommodation, have been gaining popularity in China. The minsu has become an innovative driving force promoting the transformation of tourist destinations. This paper attempts to explore the relationship between the minsu’s environment (ambience) and customer loyalty, as customer loyalty is crucial to the sustainability of minsu and tourism destinations. This paper adopts Lijiang, China, as an empirical example to explore the relationship between the multi-dimensional environment of minsu and its influence on customer loyalty. Findings include: (1) the multi-dimensional environment perception of minsu includes spatial, cultural and social environment perception, all of which have a significant positive impact on emotional experience in varying degrees; (2) the emotional experience of minsu guests plays a significant mediating role between the minsu’s environmental perception and loyalty; (3) personality traits of openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness play a moderating role in the impact of residential space environment perception on emotional experience. Using the S-O-R model, this paper introduces emotional experience and personality traits into the relationship model between the minsu’s environment perception and customer loyalty and contributes to extant literature on the influence of customer loyalty in tourist destinations. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior (TERB) is one of the key areas in tourism as it concerns tourism sustainability that further influences a destination’s competitiveness and image. This study sought to deepen the formation of TERB through tourists’ degree of environmental perception, mediated by their feeling of awe towards the environment, and moderated by their level of face consciousness. Data were collected from tourists in Tibet and the findings indicated that awe exerted partial mediation on the tourists’ perception-behavior relationship. Furthermore, face consciousness moderated the mediated relationship of humanistic environmental perception, awe, and TERB. This study adds value to existing tourism studies by revealing the influences of awe on constructing tourists’ attitude in sustainable tourism. From a practical perspective, the findings offer insights for destination management organizations (DMOs) in promoting tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior that fosters sustainable tourism development.

Drawing on the uncanny valley framework, trust theory, and similarity attraction theory, this study examines how customers’ multidimensional perceptions of humanoid service robots shape their approach and avoidance behaviors through two relational states: trust and rapport. Subsequently, structural equation modeling and mediation analysis were employed for testing. The results indicate that customers’ overall perceptions of service robots not only encourage approach behaviors but may simultaneously intensify avoidance tendencies, reflecting the ambivalent nature of human–robot interactions. We interpret this dual activation through the uncanny valley framework, in which humanlike robots simultaneously elicit attraction and aversion. Trust and rapport play critical mediating roles in this process, effectively reducing avoidance responses while strengthening customers’ approaches. Further analyses reveal that different perceptual dimensions operate through distinct mechanisms in the formation of trust and rapport. This study aims to deepen the comprehension of customer response mechanisms to humanoid service robots through a relational perspective, and offers practical insights for hotels seeking to balance operational efficiency with emotional experience in robot design and management.