Spatiotemporal characteristics of ski resorts and the mechanism analysis in China: a case study of the Northeast, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and Yangtze River Delta regions

Ski resort is an important pillar of the ice and snow industry. The study takes the Northeast Region, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region and Yangtze River Delta as the study case, with 495 ski resorts and Indoor ski and simulator centers, to analyze the spatiotemporal distribution and explore the driving mechanisms during 2010–2020. We found that: The main ski resort clusters in northern, central and southern China have an increasing clustering trend; The ‘single hotspot’ ‘pendulum hotspot’ ‘migratory hotspot’ have been clustering in Harbin, Beijing-Zhangjiakou-Baoding, and shifting from northern Jiangsu to Shanghai and central Zhejiang, respectively; Natural resources, social economics and macro policies drive ski resort distribution through various mechanisms; The ‘resource-driven’, ‘policy-driven’, and ‘economy-driven’ patterns are in the Northeast Region, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, and Yangtze River Delta, respectively.IMPACT STATEMENTIn 2015, the successful bid for the Beijing Winter Olympics brought new opportunities for ice and snow sports and ski resort construction in China, greatly stimulating public participation and propelling the ski industry into a new stage of development. However, existing research on Chinese ski resorts remains limited: it predominantly focuses on northern regions while overlooking the emerging consumer market in the south, lacks spatiotemporal comprehensive analysis, offers insufficient comparative studies on regional differences while neglecting spatial heterogeneity, and pays little attention to new skiing formats such as indoor ski simulation venues. To address these gaps, this study takes ski resorts in the Northeast provinces (NE), Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), and the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) as research objects, covering both northern and southern China. We explore the spatiotemporal distribution patterns of these resorts, simulate driving factors using geographically weighted regression (GWR) with consideration of spatial heterogeneity, and compare driving mechanisms across regions. Indoor ski simulation venues are also analyzed as a supplementary component. Our findings reveal three distinct agglomeration patterns—a "single hotspot" centered on Harbin in NE, a "pendulum hotspot" along the Beijing–Zhangjiakou–Baoding axis in BTH, and a "migrating hotspot" from northern Jiangsu to Shanghai and central Zhejiang in YRD—each driven by fundamentally different mechanisms: resource-driven, policy-driven, and economy-driven, respectively. These results provide clear, region-specific policy implications. For NE, we recommend improving transport connectivity and upgrading facility quality to revitalize its resource-based ski industry. For BTH, a gradual shift from policy-driven to economy-driven development is essential for post-Olympic sustainability. For YRD, the success of indoor ski and simulator centers offers a replicable model for snow-scarce but economically advanced metropolitan regions worldwide, demonstrating that technological substitution can effectively overcome natural disadvantages in winter sports development.