Multi-scale spatial patterns and driving factors of intangible cultural heritage in Jiangxi Province, China

As a regional living gene bank in the Chinese civilization system, Jiangxi's intangible cultural heritage (ICH) contains rich "local knowledge" and ecological wisdom. In-depth research on it has multiple theoretical significance and practical value for cultural ecology, heritage protection science, the construction of local knowledge, and sustainable development. However, current methods for analyzing the spatial distribution of ICH resources are relatively simple and lack a multi-level, multi-scale perspective. At the same time, when using geographic detectors to analyze driving factors, they often focus solely on each factor's explanatory power, while ignoring its positive and negative impacts. Therefore, this study takes the first six batches of 664 ICH resources in Jiangxi Province as the research object, uses GIS spatial analysis technology, combined with nearest neighbor index, kernel density estimation analysis, imbalance index, geographic concentration index, trend analysis, spatial autocorrelation and other methods, and combines multi-level, multi-scale and multi-model perspectives to comprehensively analyze the spatial distribution characteristics of ICH items in Jiangxi Province. The technique of combining a geographic detector with the Pearson correlation coefficient was introduced to analyze the driving factors of ICH items and to identify the positive or negative impact of each driving factor. The research results show that: (i) The ICH items structure in Jiangxi Province has different characteristics at different levels. (ii) The spatial distribution of ICH items in Jiangxi Province exhibits distinct characteristics at different scales. At the city level, there is a precise, clustered distribution, with more cities in the south and fewer in the north. At the county level, the number of intangible cultural heritage items is more evenly distributed across the region. (iii) The driving factors of ICH items in Jiangxi Province are greatly influenced by economic development and social culture, and less by the natural environment. Based on the above research results, this can serve as a valuable reference for theoretical research, protection, and the preservation of ICH resources.