The key purpose of this paper is to address an inherent gap in the literature on safety issues in the development of night tourism. This research takes a novel methodological approach, by using 8787 cases of tourism safety accidents in typical night tourism cities in China, and applying social network analysis (SNA) and quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) regression analysis to explore the multidimensional structural characteristics and risk-causing factors of night tourism accidents. Key findings include: (1) Amidst the complexity and diversity of the night tourism safety accidents in cities, disastrous accidents, public health accidents, natural disasters, and social security accidents are the main types of night tourism safety accidents. (2) Night tourism safety accidents have strong aggregation in specific time periods and spatial regions. There are differences in the timepoint and duration of each accident type, showing different distribution characteristics in different cities and locations. (3) Distribution of accident types in night tourism products shows obvious core-edge structure characteristics. (4) The degree of co-occurrence of four risk-inducing factors, i.e., personnel, facilities, environment, and management, has high explanatory power at the accident correlation level in the co-occurrence network of night tourism safety accidents in cities, and the influence effects of risk factors are heterogeneous at different timepoints. Our results provide some valuable implications for optimizing night tourism safety governance in cities.
Keywords: accident characteristics; night tourism; quadratic assignment procedure; risk inducing factors; safety accidents; social network analysis.