Listening to the Prairie: Exploring the Local Imagery in Inner Mongolian Grassland Songs and Their Influence on Tourist Desire

Prairie songs serve not only as crucial cultural expressions of the northern frontier and grassland heritage but also as effective marketing tools to enhance the brand equity of grassland tourism destinations and stimulate tourist motivations. This study focuses on typical Inner Mongolian grassland songs, employing mixed research methods including keyword co-occurrence analysis, social network analysis, and content analysis to analyze their representation of place imagery and their impact on travel intentions. The findings are as follows: (1) Inner Mongolian grassland songs predominantly feature themes of the "grassland," encompassing climate, celestial landscapes, biological diversity, cultural dynamics, and emotional connections. (2) The content structure of these songs exhibits a concentric pattern of "core, semi-marginal, and marginal" themes. Core themes primarily cover material landscapes and social psychology, while semi-marginal themes emphasize cultural imagery within the grassland space, and marginal themes extend into specific thematic explorations. (3) Inner Mongolian grassland songs demonstrate characteristics of localized landscape imagery, hierarchical cultural representations, and emotive poetic expressions. (4) These songs significantly influence travel intentions through their appeal in landscape aesthetics, cultural narratives, and emotional resonances. Based on these conclusions, the paper proposes strategies to promote grassland music tourism by enhancing sensory marketing in grassland tourism songs and developing innovative grassland music tourism products.