As a rural tourism product, homestays play an essential role in sustainability. The operation of homestay business is directly linked to the success or failure of community-based tourism development. By taking rural homestay business in Zhejiang as a research object, the paper aims to clarify the interrelationships among influencing factors in the operation of rural homestay business from a performance perspective. Based on multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques, this paper not only constructed the evaluation system of homestay business in the Chinese context by the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM), but also disclosed the interrelationships of criteria and aspects by a decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and the DEMATEL-based analytical network process (DANP). Results show that: (1) 5 aspects and 31 criteria comprise the evaluation system of homestay business, (2) the aspects and criteria with high global weight are nearly clustered into the effect group, (3) the weight of service quality and homestay geist and community co-prosperity as the rank top two, (4) more than these, hardware facilities construct the product features of homestays because of the role of driving elements, (5) owing to the core elements, criteria about operational efficiency become guiding principles of homestay business, and (6) service quality and integrated utilization of socio-cultural resources underpin the sustainable development of homestay business in the long run. Therefore, the interrelationships of aspects and criteria provide further insights and underline the focus on homestay business for practitioners. At the same time, these serve as an effective administration tool for industry administrations. These will lay a solid foundation to enhance the level of homestay business and boost the sustainable development of community-based tourism.

This study focuses on the early stage of high-speed railways (HSRs) and corrects problems in a timely manner and integrates the direction for tourism development. Its aim is to realize the sustainable development of mountain tourism in the southwest region of China. Based on the panel data from 2010 to 2019 of 39 cities in Guizhou, Guangxi, and Yunnan provinces, which are in the southwest mountainous region of China, and using data envelope analyses, the Malmquist productivity index, the Tobit model, and the intermediary effect, this study verifies the impact of core factors on the development efficiency of mountain tourism in the early stage of an HSR to find the problems existing in tourism development at present and in future stages. Results show the following: (1) In its early stage, an HSR is not yet the key factor to improve the efficiency of tourism development in the mountainous region. (2) The promotion effect of an HSR on the efficiency of tourism development is delayed. (3) In its early stage, an HSR breaks the balance of resource investment and wastes resources. (4) Taking HSRs is born out of the rigid demand of residents in the mountainous region rather than of their income levels. (5) Accessibility in mountain tourism plays a positive role between HSRs and the efficiency of tourism development.

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The assessment of tourist destination images should not only be the arrangement of multiple influencing factors. This study explores the complex causal relationship for tourist destination images based on a configuration perspective to enhance the overall tourism image using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method. The configurational paths for promoting tourism image can be categorized into two types and nine configurations in Shandong Province. Therefore, this study recommends augmenting the tourism image of the entire region with the logical thinking of “segmentation–integration” and “enhancing strengths–supplementing weakness” and finally realizing a sustainable tourist destination image.