Abstract: Since its emergence in 2023, “Special Forces-Style Tourism” has rapidly gained traction among young Chinese tourists, with social media functioning as a primary vehicle for its dissemination. Despite this trend, limited research has examined how the heterogeneity of tourism social media landscapes affects individuals’ tourism intentions. Drawing on the theory of the tourist gaze, this study investigates the impact of challenge-oriented vs. persona-oriented tourism social media landscapes on individuals’ intention to engage in Special Forces-Style Tourism. A multi-method approach was adopted, including one secondary data analysis, one eye-tracking experiment, and two laboratory experiments, to progressively test the proposed hypotheses. The findings reveal a matching effect between social media landscape types and individuals’ self-construal types. This interaction influences tourism intention through the mediating roles of achievement motivation and identity identification. This research advances the understanding of psychological decision-making mechanisms in the context of Special Forces-Style Tourism, extends the theoretical framework of the tourist gaze, and offers practical insights for digital platform content optimization and algorithm design.

Key words: Special Forces-Style Tourism, Tourism social media landscape, Achievement motivation, Identity, Self-Construal