Tourist recreation behavior and influencing factor analysis based on digital footprints in Kanas Scenic Area, Xinjiang

The synergistic development of ecotourism, nature conservation and community well-being is central to the sustainable management of ecologically sensitive tourism destinations. Thus, this study investigates this nexus in the Kanas Scenic Area, Xinjiang. A comprehensive dataset of tourist recreational behavior was constructed by integrating multi-source digital footprints, including ‘Two-Step Road’ outdoor activity trajectories, online textual content, points of interest (POI) and natural and socioeconomic data. ArcGIS 10.8 kernel density estimation and the Geodetector model, combined with a seasonal intensity index, were employed to analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics, intensity and driving mechanisms of tourist recreation across all four seasons. Key findings are as follows: (1) Temporal patterns reveal a pronounced ‘summer–autumn peak and winter–spring trough’, with cyclists and hikers favoring autumn, while self-driving tourists exhibit a bimodal summer–autumn pattern. (2) Spatial behavior follows a ‘widely dispersed, locally clustered’ distribution; while seasonal route trajectories are generally consistent, marked seasonal differences exist in recreational intensity and node utilization. (3) Geodetector analysis indicates that preferred recreational paths arise from the synergistic interplay of ecological baseline conditions, socioeconomic regulation and facility-service provision, with all pairwise factor interactions demonstrating bivariate enhancement. Among these, natural resource endowments and socioeconomic factors dominate the driving process, whereas micro-topographic features and infrastructure exert relatively limited influence. This study provides a novel research paradigm that integrates geographic and behavioral data for interpreting tourist recreation in ecologically sensitive destinations and offers a reference for spatiotemporal monitoring and targeted regulation of visitor behavior in similar protected areas.