From Shock to Involution: Decoupling Catering Industry Resilience across Morphological Tiers in Hunan Province, China (2017–2024) via POI Big Data

Amidst the global restructuring of urban commerce, China’s catering industry has transitioned from a phase of exogenous shock-response to a phase of structural "involution" (Neijuan). While existing research often relies on static snapshots or focuses on megacities, this study proposes the Morphological Density-Percentile Decoupling (MDPD) framework to track longitudinal survival trajectories across urban hierarchical tiers from 2017 to 2024. Using Hunan Province as a representative regional laboratory, we implement a rigorous multi-stage data audit and sensitivity analysis to mitigate the uncertainties of digital traces. Grounded in Adaptive Cycle Theory, our analysis reveals a fundamental morphological shift: while 2020 mobility shocks are consistent with a "flight to quality" toward primary cores, the 2024 landscape may reflect a Structural Middle-Market Expansion toward Tier-II buffer clusters. We identify a "Resilience Paradox" where hyper-saturation in high-density zones may be associated with increased vulnerability as described by "Agglomeration Diseconomies." By contrasting regional hubs with Tier-1 megacities, this research provides a scale-agnostic resilience framework that captures how commercial systems reorganize in response to observed changes in spatial distribution and survival patterns, which may suggest broader socioeconomic mechanisms such as consumption downgrading and centrifugal spatial diffusion. Ultimately, while these findings provide a robust provincial-scale benchmark for inland China, they serve as a comparative baseline to inform future studies across diverse regional economic contexts.