With the improvement of transportation network and the upgrading of consumer demand, rural tourism presents significant spatio-temporal evolution characteristics. In-depth analysis of rural tourism flow characteristics and revealing its spatio-temporal evolution law are of great significance to optimize the regional tourism layout, promote the implementation of rural revitalization strategy, and promote the high-quality development of rural tourism. Based on the rural tourism development data of 31 provinces in mainland China from 2015 to 2023, this study explores the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of rural tourism flows by using spatial autocorrelation analysis, spatial autoregressive model and spatial trend surface analysis. The results of the study show that: the heat of rural tourism shows an “S”-shaped trajectory of change, with the most rapid growth between 2018 and 2020; the distribution within the year is characterized by “four peaks and four valleys”, with the passenger flow in spring and autumn being larger than that in summer, and the lowest in winter, and the passenger rail transportation volume has a significant positive correlation with the GDP of rural tourism (the coefficient is 2.758, p<0.001). In terms of spatial distribution, the source of rural tourism was “high in the south and low in the north, high in the east and low in the west”, and the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Henan, Anhui and other provinces were the main sources of tourists, and the spatial lag coefficients were 0.232 and 0.252, respectively (p<0.001), which indicated that there was an obvious spatial clustering effect. The robustness test further verifies the robustness of the regression results. It is found that the synergistic development of railroad network and aviation network positively affects rural tourism flows, and with the improvement of transportation conditions, the spatial agglomeration effect of rural tourism source market gradually weakens, and the scope of the source market keeps expanding.
