The impact of community participation in tourism on the perception of collective memory landscapes: Case studies of traditional villages Azheke and Dayutang in Yunnan, China

Community participation in tourism is a rural development model that positions villagers as the primary implementer while effectively coordinating the diverse needs of both villagers and tourists. This model exerts heterogeneous impacts on the perception of collective memory landscapes for the two groups. To explore the underlying impact mechanisms, this study focused on two adjacent traditional Hani villages—Azheke and Dayutang—located in Yuanyang, Yunnan Province, China. Azheke is a typical case of community participation in tourism, while Dayutang has no tourism development. Cognitive maps, semi-structured interviews, and frequency statistical analysis were employed to conduct a comparative analysis of the differences in collective memory landscapes between villagers and tourists in the two villages. Statistically significant differences were identified in the collective memory landscapes between villagers and tourists. The findings reveal three core impact mechanisms: (1) The economic incentive of benefit allocation guides residents' attention to dividend-related spaces, strengthening associated collective memory while weakening that of non-dividend cultural spaces; (2) Tourists' demand for spatial participation enriches rural public spaces and service facilities, which become new shared memory nodes; (3) Government investment in tourism infrastructure enhances residents' recognition of living spaces but diverts attention from non-economically valuable ecological and ritual spaces. Additionally, tourism development leads to asymmetric spatial cognition: tourists form a holistic “natural-cultural” cognitive structure, while residents focus on tourism-related functional spaces, neglecting peripheral ecological and cultural elements. This study empirically links community participation in tourism's benefit allocation mechanisms to collective memory landscapes, uncovers residents-tourists’ asymmetric spatial cognition in ethnic minority villages, and develops a comparative framework for adjacent villages with contrasting development models—supplementing relevant rural tourism and cultural memory literature, extending spatial perception theory's application in cross-cultural rural tourism, and enriching empirical evidence for underdeveloped ethnic minority rural transformation with global references. • Community participation in tourism shapes villagers’ and tourists’ collective memory perceptions differently. • Comparing two Hani villages reveals three core mechanisms of tourism’s impact on collective memory. • Benefit allocation shifts residents’ focus to dividend spaces, weakening other memory sites. • Tourism development creates asymmetric cognition: tourists hold holistic views while residents focus on functional spaces. • This study links benefit allocation to collective memory, enriching rural tourism and cultural memory literature.