^^^^
That is essentially it. Simple cropping doesn't change pixels, it just discards those that are outside the crop box while those that are inside the box remain the same (but of course there are now fewer total image pixels than originally.)
Rotating redraws all the pixels because their positions in the frame have changed and some of those that were near the edges are lost. There is some loss of sharpness but it is small and easily corrected because it is uniform to all the pixels. In most rotating tools there is usually some sharpening built in.
Distortion correction also redraws all or almost all the pixels, but the position change is less in the center and progressively more toward the edges. Some edge pixels are lost and the resharpening is more complex.
Now suppose that after you have done any combination of the above operations and ended up with an image that is too small for printing, etc. It has to be resized and sharpened. Scaling does that.
[This is OT a bit, but since PSCS4 PS has had "Content Aware Scaling" in which it recognizes which pixels are important and focused subject pixels and uses only the fuzzier background/edge pixels for the scaling while keeping the subject the same size. Good for making the image aspect ratio fit the print paper.]
