Multiscale assessment identifies heritage value structures of traditional villages in the Li River Basin, China

Existing assessments of traditional villages increasingly address landscape settings, cultural connections, and living heritage, yet a clear method is still lacking for translating information from different spatial scales into comparable village-level indicators while retaining differences among value dimensions beyond aggregate scores. Using 58 traditional villages in the Li River Basin, this study develops a multi-scale heritage value assessment framework comprising landscape-ecological support, cultural-network association, and village-entity continuity. GIS-based spatial analysis, landscape character identification, minimum cumulative resistance modelling, AHP–entropy combined weighting, and K-means clustering were integrated to identify overall value grades and value structures. Overall scores ranged from 3.42 to 7.36, with Grades II and III accounting for 72.41% of the sample. Four value structures were identified, showing that similar overall value levels may correspond to different dimensional configurations. Sensitivity analysis, cluster-stability testing, and independent expert assessment indicated that the main results were generally stable and externally consistent. The framework provides a diagnostic basis for differentiated conservation, although the results remain partly dependent on expert-informed weighting and modelled spatial relationships.