Exploring the Spatial Image of Traditional Villages from the Tourists’ Hand-Drawn Sketches

As an important concept in cognitive psychology and behavioural geography, destination spatial image cognition has a significant impact on the quality of tourists’ experience, and on their behavioural intention. However, studies of spatial image cognition in small-scale traditional villages are limited. Therefore, the present study analyses the spatial image characteristics of four traditional villages of World Cultural Heritage sites in China through the use of tourists’ hand-drawn sketches, using a sample of 366 respondents to further explore the evolution process of cognitive map types and constituent elements with tourists’ stay days. Results indicate that the spatial cognitive map and landmarks are the main types and dominant elements of spatial image cognition, respectively. The tourists’ spatial cognitive process includes two sequences, as follows: the evolution sequence of dominant cognitive maps is “spatial + individual → spatial + individual + hybrid → spatial + individual”, while the evolution sequence of dominant cognition elements is “landmark + path + animal and plant → landmark + animal and plant + path”. This study extends the current destination spatial image cognition literature, and has substantial value for the destination in terms of developing traditional village sustainable tourism based on the tourists’ attitude, as obtained by the cognitive map method.