Jewelry Store Cluster Forms and Characteristics of Urban Commercial Spaces in Macau

As a world-renowned tourist and gaming city, Macau’s jewelry industry has formed significant spatial clustering driven by the integration of the tourism and gaming industries. However, existing research has not thoroughly explored the coupling mechanism between the agglomeration of this high-value industry and tourism potential circulation characteristics. Meanwhile, the industry confronts practical challenges, including an unbalanced layout between high-end and local brands, intense competition in core areas, and distinct service coverage blind spots in non-core areas. To fill these research gaps, this study takes the Macau Special Administrative Region as the research scope, integrates POI kernel density estimation, Voronoi diagram analysis, and space syntax to construct a three-dimensional analytical framework encompassing agglomeration intensity, service scope, and tourism flow matching, and systematically investigates the spatial clustering pattern of jewelry stores and its coupling mechanism with tourism potential circulation. The study reveals the following findings: (1) Jewelry stores exhibit a dual-segment, four-core clustering pattern. Among these, 38 high-end brands are concentrated in casino complexes and their surrounding areas, 34 comprehensive brands are evenly distributed across core and residential areas, and 300 local brands are mainly scattered in residential areas of the Macau Peninsula. (2) The service scope of jewelry stores is negatively correlated with agglomeration density. The Voronoi diagram area in core areas is 62% smaller than that in non-core areas, accompanied by a high degree of overlap—35% for high-end brands—and intense competition. In contrast, non-core areas have coverage blind spots accounting for 18% of Macau’s total land area. (3) Under a 300 m walking radius, high-integration paths identified by space syntax demonstrate an 85% matching degree with tourist routes, and the four core areas form differentiated coupling types. This study is the first to quantify the differentiated coupling mechanism between multi-level jewelry brands and tourism potential circulation. It further improves the GIS analysis framework for the coupling between commercial agglomeration and tourist behavior. The revealed negative correlation between service scope and agglomeration density, and the adaptive principle between brand spatial layout and regional functional attributes, provide universal references for similar business formats in tourist cities, including cultural and creative retail and characteristic catering. In practice, this research optimizes the spatial layout of Macau’s jewelry industry and increases the coverage rate of service blind spots to over 85%. It also provides scientific support for tourism route planning and the coordinated development of tourism and commerce in high-density tourist destinations.