Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin has risen to the level of a major national strategy. As a key pillar industry within the basin, the stability and sustainable development of tourism are vital to the regional economy and society. Enhancing the resilience of the tourism economy has become a critical issue for achieving high-quality regional development. This paper takes 39 prefecture-level cities in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin as research units. Using methods such as the Entropy Weight-TOPSIS model, VAR model, social network analysis, and QAP regression model, it comprehensively measures and conducts time-series analysis of the tourism economic resilience levels of each city from 2010 to 2024, determines the intercity resilience relationships, and constructs a spatial correlation network based on these findings to further explore the structural characteristics and influencing factors of the spatial network. The results show: (1) During the study period, the overall comprehensive scores of tourism economic resilience in the middle and lower reaches of the basin showed an upward trend, but there is significant internal regional imbalance. (2) The spatial network structure of regional resilience is distinct, with 269 correlation relationships identified; the overall network density needs improvement and presents a typical "core-periphery" hierarchical structure. (3) Block model analysis reveals that cities play four differentiated roles and functions in the network: "net spillover," "bidirectional spillover," "broker," and "net beneficiary." (4) QAP regression analysis confirms that population mobility, geographical proximity, differences in economic development, and differences in tourism resource endowments are all significant positive influencing factors driving network formation. They constitute the network's "circulatory system," "spatial framework," "hierarchical order," and "internal gravity," respectively. Finally, based on the empirical analysis, this paper proposes policy recommendations for optimizing the spatial layout of the tourism economy in the Yellow River Basin and formulating differentiated strategies to enhance resilience.</p>