Rural Touristification and its Evolutionary Mechanisms: An Actor-Network Perspective from Cuandixia Village, China

Rural tourism has become a vital pathway for rural restructuring, while the evolutionary mechanisms of rural touristification remain underexplored. Taking Cuandixia Village in Beijing as a case study, this paper explores the evolution of rural touristification through Actor-Network Theory (ANT). The findings show that that touristification in Cuandixia Village evolved through four stages: initial exploration, rapid development, quality improvement and in-depth transformation. The actor network gradually shifted from government dominance to multi-stakeholder governance. The continuous reconstruction of Obligatory Passage Points (OPPs) reshaped actor relationships, while human and non-human actors jointly drove touristification. The process is characterized by recurring tensions between development and conservation and between market forces and local communities, cycling through stabilization, destabilization, and reorganization. Sustainable rural touristification depends on the coordination of heterogeneous actor networks. This study advances a relational and process-oriented understanding of rural touristification and provides insights for the governance and sustainable development of traditional villages.