Research on place branding in the commodification of nature of agricultural heritage sites: Taking the Biluochun tea-fruit complex system in Wuzhong, Jiangsu as a case study

As a symbiotic field of nature and culture, the construction of a place brand for agrocultural heritage sites is an important pathway to achieve their conservation, transmission, and revitalization. However, existing research has paid relatively insufficient attention to the commodification of natural elements and the construction of brand symbols in the place branding of these sites. In view of this, taking the Biluochun tea-fruit complex system in Wuzhong, Jiangsu province as a case study, this paper employs comprehensive qualitative methods to explore how the process of commodification of nature and multi-stakeholder interactions dynamically shape the brand image within agricultural heritage systems. The research indicates that natural elements in the case study area, such as animal and plant resources, land resources, and agricultural landscapes, undergo commodification or an intensification of commodification driven by capital dimensions like policies and markets. This results in increasingly diverse commodity forms, which constitute the material foundation of the place brand. Material and cultural symbols are encoded and embedded into products, prompting the brand narrative to evolve from de-localization to re-localization. Production stakeholders maintain the brand image by constraining production behaviors through formal and informal institutions. Meanwhile, platforms and tourist consumers, through embodied experiences, enable the coupling of brand symbols and imaginations, with the resulting discursive representations further reinforcing the lock-in effect of the brand image. Through a cultural political economy analysis, this study expands the theoretical boundaries of place branding in agricultural heritage systems and offers a political ecology narrative of commodification of nature within a Chinese context.