The advent of the Metaverse, a convergence of virtual and physical realities, presents unprecedented opportunities for promoting cultural tourism along the historic Silk Roads within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework. However, this emerging technology’s potential remains largely unexplored in the context of cultural heritage preservation and its promotion. The aim of this study is to address this gap by empirically examining how the Metaverse can be harnessed to improve tourists’ experiences, support sustainable tourism development, and promote cultural exchange along the Silk Roads. In this study, we employed a mixed-methods approach grounded in attribution theory, using both surveys and semi-structured interviews with Silk Road tourists who had been exposed to Metaverse applications. To investigate the relationships between Metaverse features, tourists’ attributions, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions, we used structural equation modeling and thematic analysis. The findings revealed that perceived immersion, avatar identification, and cultural authenticity significantly influenced tourists’ internal, stable, and controllable attributions. Interviews further highlighted the Metaverse’s potential to promote accessibility, interpretation, and engagement with Silk Road heritage, while also raising sociocultural and ethical considerations. This paper also showcases the development of Metaverse digital twin prototypes for several iconic Silk Road cities to demonstrate the potential for participatory virtual environments to promote cultural heritage preservation, accessibility, and sustainable tourism. The study’s findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of Metaverse tourism and the application of attribution theory, offering practical insight for the responsible and effective harnessing of this transformative technology. This research provides actionable recommendations for policymakers, destination managers, and technology providers to optimize the Metaverse’s potential for cultural tourism along the Silk Roads. This has great potential in promoting the BRI’s connectivity and cooperation objectives. This paper lays the foundation for future research and responsible innovation at the intersection of emerging technologies, cultural heritage, and sustainable tourism development.

This is a systematic review of the literature on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its impact on tourism and heritage in participating countries along the Silk Roads. China launched the BRI in 2013 with the aim of promoting global trade and stimulating economic growth through the development of infrastructure and cultural cooperation. This review examines studies for the period from 2013 to 2023, focusing on key themes such as tourist flows, destination development, urban renewal, heritage preservation, and cultural route revival. The systematic review follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, incorporating 56 relevant documents that cover both tourism and heritage domains. The findings highlight substantial potential for the development of new tourism products and destinations, improved urban renewal, and the preservation of cultural heritage, provided that integrated policies, public-private collaboration, and equitable community participation frameworks are implemented with attention to ecological limits. However, the review also identifies significant challenges, including financial imbalances, uneven access to benefits, social disruption, cultural commodification, and environmental degradation. Addressing these issues requires careful, context-specific planning. The study concludes with a proposal for a future research agenda that includes exploring underrepresented regions, developing sustainable tourism models, and fostering interdisciplinary research to ensure a balanced approach to economic development and heritage preservation. This review’s findings provide valuable insight for policymakers, tourism officials, and cultural heritage managers, guiding the development of policies that balance economic growth with the preservation of cultural and natural heritage sites. This research contributes to the academic discourse by elucidating the complex interplay between the BRI and the Silk Roads’ tourism and heritage, offering a pathway for sustainable and inclusive growth.

This paper examines the potential of emerging immersive technologies like the Metaverse to promote the Silk Road cultural heritage within the framework of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The ancient Silk Roads facilitated vibrant pan-Eurasian exchange for over 1500 years, catalyzing early globalization. Modern connectivity initiatives like China's BRI focus extensively on infrastructure to revive these cultural linkages that defined the historic Silk Roads. However, realizing the tourism and developmental potential of the intercultural legacy tied to architectural sites, motifs, cuisine, beliefs, and artistic traditions diffused along these historic routes faces contemporary challenges around preservation, geopolitics, site deterioration, costs, uneven access, and cultural homogenization. This study explores the implications of Metaverse in revitalizing this heritage in situ and through digital channels. The paper provides a multi-disciplinary approach to aligning digital revitalization plans around the Metaverse for the future that reconnect modern societies with ancient linkages via immersive storytelling of the Silk Roads.

Traditional architectural heritage and craftsmanship face global preservation challenges. This study explores transforming Cai Family Houses in Quanzhou, China, into an open-air museum to preserve and showcase traditional craftsmanship. Employing spatial syntax analysis, observational studies, and a craftsmanship inventory, the research reveals significant potential for museum development. Existing spatial configurations align well with anticipated visitor patterns, requiring minimal structural alterations. The site houses a rich array of traditional skills and artifacts suitable for exhibition. An 'Open-air Museum' concept was developed, emphasizing community engagement and adaptive reuse, offering a sustainable conservation model that balances preservation with modern visitorship needs. This approach provides a promising solution for conserving Cai Family Houses and associated cultural heritage, with potential applications to similar sites globally.

Historic towns and villages face growing conservation pressures as globalization exposes tensions between universal standards and culturally specific practices. We compare Western frameworks associated with UNESCO and ICOMOS with China’s national regulations for historic settlement conservation, focusing on differing assumptions about heritage value, authenticity, and preservation–development trade-offs. Systematic text analysis of 17 foundational policy and doctrinal documents shows that the Venice Charter tradition prioritizes material authenticity and expert-led minimal intervention, whereas Chinese regulations operationalize spatial–visual integrity (traditional pattern and historic townscape) and explicit socio-economic integration. Building on this complementarity, we propose a provisional dual-track decision-support framework as a proof of concept. Track 1 safeguards material-authenticity cores for exceptional sites; Track 2 supports living-heritage cores for inhabited settlements; and hybrid designations accommodate mixed cases. Framework application unfolds in two stages: designation screening, followed by implementation-feasibility assessment, with a phased Track 2-Lite pathway for contexts in which binding participatory governance is not yet viable. Illustrated through four UNESCO World Heritage Sites using secondary data, the framework links cultural preservation with economic viability, climate adaptation, and community stewardship, while acknowledging that its thresholds and governance templates remain heuristic and require broader empirical validation. The approach supports SDG target 11.4 and SDG 13 and advances methodological and authenticity pluralism beyond simple preservation–development binaries.