Spatiotemporal patterns of cultural ecosystem service supply, demand and service flows along the Jiangsu music–cultural corridor: a grid-based framework across 13 prefecture-level cities

This study evaluates potential cultural ecosystem service (CES) supply, potential demand and modelled least-cost accessibility pathways across Jiangsu Province on a common 1 km grid for 2014, 2019 and 2020. Nine indicators are organised into a six-indicator supply block and a three-indicator demand block. After direction adjustment and min-max standardisation on the common valid-cell mask, entropy-derived within-dimension weights are normalised to sum to one and the supply and demand blocks are each assigned an equal block weight of 0.5 before the relative supply-demand balance is calculated. Spatial dependence is assessed with row-standardised Queen contiguity, 999 permutations and false-discovery-rate-adjusted local statistics. Strong source and sink patches are identified from the 70th percentiles of positive surplus and deficit magnitude, and deterministic patches covering at least 90% of strong surplus/deficit are linked through an OSM-derived travel-time resistance surface by a source-conserving, deficit-weighted least-cost allocation. Supply clustering weakened slightly (Moran’s I 0.7598 to 0.7488), whereas demand clustering strengthened (0.8062–0.8203) and the spatial clustering of the balance surface increased (0.6985–0.7356). Mean relative balance shifted from −0.000147 in 2014 to −0.003555 in 2019 and -0.004462 in 2020; significant low-low balance clusters expanded from 5,834 to 7,044 cells. Under the main decay setting (decay parameter β = 0.02), weighted mean least-cost time increased from 97.0 to 105.7 min and the share of allocated flow within 60 min fell from 28.75% to 26.58%. In contrast, the 90th-percentile corridor skeleton did not show a monotonic loss of topological connectivity: the largest-component share was 78.32%, 79.15% and 79.14%. Taken together, the three cross-sections indicate a shift toward greater demand-side imbalance and higher modelled accessibility cost, while allocated pair flow decreases slightly and the q90 corridor skeleton does not exhibit a monotonic decline in topological connectivity. The pathway layer therefore represents modelled potential accessibility rather than observed cultural movement.