Revista de investigación turística y hotelería

The Dynamic Analysis of Tourism Industrial Ecologization in Mainland China: Its Status and Evolution

Jie Yin, Xiangmin Zheng and Sha Fang

Tourism industrial ecologization (TIE) is one of the effective ways to resolve the conflicts between tourism development and environmental protection, and to achieve tourism sustainability. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of TIE’s status and evolution is the foundation and prerequisite of promoting tourism sustainable development. This study analyzed the structure and interactions among the subsystems of tourism industrial ecosystem, revealed the status and evolution of TIE. The results showed that tourism industrial ecosystem included tourism industrial subsystem (producing pressure), the environment subsystem (consuming the pressure and deteriorating the environment) and the society subsystem (response to the environment). The assessment result showed that the coupling level of tourism industrial ecosystem was in the middle of barely coordination and primary coordination, which meant that the level of TIE was not high. The evolution demonstrated as following: the stress index showed a rapid and massive growth trend, which caused by the negative impacts produced by tourism. And the state index declined, which meant that pressures generated by tourist activities resulted in a deterioration of the environment. The response index was oblique as a “w” type, which marked that the fluctuation was on the rise. Accordingly, optimizing the development of TIE can be remedied through three recommendations.