From Cultural Symbols to Consumption Scenarios—And Beyond: Relational Cultural Sustainability Disclosure and Accountability Gaps in the Annual Reports of Chinese Tourism Firms

Abstract

Tourism firms frequently invoke heritage, tradition, and place identity, yet cultural visibility does not show whether corporate narratives connect culture to organisational action, stewardship, or community value. This study develops and independently validates a relational measure of annual report cultural sustainability disclosure using 85 reports from 17 Chinese A-share tourism firms during 2021–2025. A frozen rule-based classifier was evaluated on 400 previously unseen narrative units coded independently by two authors. Intercoder kappa ranged from 0.810 to 1.000 across eight dimensions. In the 200-unit probability sample, confirmatory F1 was 0.982 for cultural symbols, 1.000 for organisational capability and consumption scenarios, and 0.977 for participation/benefit; naturally rare dimensions are reported descriptively. Applied to 26,131 punctuation-based narrative units, the classifier identified 3828 cultural symbol units, of which 2167 had a strict semantic link to capability, scenario, or partner content. The pooled isolation share was 43.4% (firm-cluster bootstrap 95% CI: 34.7–50.4%). Stewardship appeared in 220 units across 40 firm-years. Eleven strict same-unit community participation/benefit links were observed across 10 firm-years, increasing to 47 windows under an adjacent-unit sensitivity definition. Firm-level trajectories were heterogeneous: all Holm-adjusted sign test p-values were at least 0.717. Category-pair coverage was only weakly related to report length and remained highly correlated with equal-unit rarefaction. The study contributes a reproducible measurement architecture that separates cultural visibility, relational operationalisation, and documentary accountability. It does not verify implementation, consent, benefit distribution, or sustainability performance.