Elsevier

Tourism Management

Volume 75, December 2019, Pages 609-625
Tourism Management

Evaluation and drive mechanism of tourism ecological security based on the DPSIR-DEA model

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2019.06.021Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This study creates a new evaluation “DPSIR-DEA" of tourism ecological security.

  • The tourism ecological security of the YRD shows the “N” type time evolution law.

  • The southeast regions are the hot spots and the northwest regions are mostly the cold spots in the YRD.

  • Some critical impact factors are identified and the driving mechanism is constructed.

Abstract

Tourism ecological security evaluation is a critical way of measuring the sustainable development of tourism destinations. Based on ecological system theory, this study creates a new comprehensive evaluation model, “Driver-Pressure-State- Impact-Response"—"Data Envelopment Analysis” (DPSIR-DEA), to measure tourism ecological security, which is an evaluation of “Quality” from the perspective of “Efficiency”. The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) is chosen as the study site, and methods including Geo-Detector and spatial autocorrelation are used to analyze space-time law and influence factors. Results indicate that the spatial differentiation pattern of southeast–northwest is gradually presented from hot-spot to cold-spot. Moreover, some critical impact factors affecting tourism ecological security are identified, including third-industry growth rate, tourist density, etc, and the driving mechanism is constructed. We not only introduces a new evaluation of tourism ecological security but also explores the crucial impact indexed and the driving mechanism.

Introduction

Recently, the world has been focusing on the sustainable development of tourism (Ahmad, Draz, Su, Ozturk, & Rauf, 2018), which has been a key policy objective at the global, national and regional levels (Peng et al., 2017). The sustainable development of tourism is characterized by a strong emphasis on the environmental impact of short-term and long-term development of tourism (Tepelus & Córdoba, 2005). As an important research field of sustainable tourism development, tourism eco-security has assumed an increasingly prominent position (Qian, Shen, & Law, 2018). However, with the rapid development of the tourism industry around the world, the negative impacts on the ecological environment are increasing. These negative impacts not only affect the self-integrity and ecological service function of the tourism destination ecosystem but also threaten the ecological security of tourism destinations (Qiu, Fang, Yang, & Zhu, 2017). The sustainable development of tourism must be achieved when the natural resources and ecological environment that depend on tourism development are in balance and there is no threat or risk (George Assaf, 2012). How to maintain tourism ecological security has become the consensus goal of the international community. Tourism ecological security ensures that the resources on which tourism depends are in a state of sustainable and healthy balance. In other words, in tourist areas and for specific periods of time, natural resources, the ecological environment, tourism and other system elements maintain a normal healthy structure and function (Liu, Yang, Di, & Chen, 2009). Some scholars have asserted that tourism ecological security has become the main index with which to measure environmental impact and sustainable development (Liu, Zhang, & Fu, 2017), which was the guiding ideology of regional long term sustainable development (Costanza et al., 1997; Yang et al., 2018). Regarding this critical issue, we analyze the current situation of tourism ecological security development, identify its critical influencing factors and driving mechanisms, and discover how it influences the development of tourism ecological security. Finding solutions to these issues can not only provide a constructive perspective and development solution for practitioners but also have significant implications on the sustainable development of regional tourism.

Ecological pattern and ecosystem theory is used as the theoretical foundational theory and provides a theoretical basis for the development of new evaluation methods. On the one hand, the essence of this theory is that in a certain period of time in the ecosystem, some elements, including organisms, environments, and organisms, through energy flow, material circulation and information transfer, will ultimately reach a highly adaptive, coordinated and unified state (Reynolds, 2002). Theoretically, ecological pattern and ecosystem theory provides foundational guidance for the maintenance of the security state of tourism ecosystem and also highlights the multi-level and multi-dimensional characteristics of ecosystem elements.

Similarly, if the relationship between tourism ecosystem elements, such as that between tourists and the environment, tourists and the tourism destination, and tourism and the environment, is able to maintain a harmonious and unified state, the tourism industry will maintain a healthy and effective development trend, and tourism ecological security will also be guaranteed (Liu et al., 2009). On the other hand, ecological pattern and ecosystem theory also emphasizes that the coordinated development of various elements will contribute to the effective operation of the ecosystem (Kurniawan, Adrianto, Bengen, & Prasetyo, 2019), which is crucial for tourism ecological security. It is worth noting that the ecological security system shows a combination of social, economic and environmental effects. Therefore, a particularly important issue must explore whether all the elements of tourism ecosystems are in a state of coordinated and efficient operation. Previous studies have focused on evaluating the tourism ecosystem (Yang et al., 2018), tourism ecological footprint (Wang, Hu, He, & Wang, 2017), carrying capacity (Navarro Jurado et al., 2012; Mccool & Lime, 2001), and sustainable tourism (Buijtendijk, Blom, Vermeer, & van dar Duim, 2018), which only measure the current situation of ecological security and the coordinated development of the system through “quantitative evaluation”, ignoring the evaluation of the “quality” of tourism ecological security. Further, few studies pay sufficient attention to ecosystem balance and efficiency. More importantly, the evaluation of tourism ecological security is the basis for and an important topic of present and future research in this field that must be further addressed. Peng et al. (2017) asserted that efficiency was the best way to measure whether tourism destinations had the greatest effect with the lowest resource and environmental costs in the system. It is also a good indicator that reflects the operating state of the tourism ecological system and the perfect way to measure tourism ecological security. Specifically, we will address the efficiency of this critical issue, one that evaluates the operating state of tourism eco-systems. However, few studies measure tourism ecological security from an efficiency perspective, which not only ignores the essential issue of ecological security but also fails to evaluate the interaction effects of the internal factors of the system. Therefore, this study focuses on addressing these unsolved questions pertaining to tourism sustainable development. They include how to scientifically analyze tourism ecological security; innovative tourism ecological security evaluation methods; and explaining the interaction mechanism among tourism development, social economy and environmental quality.

Analyzing tourism ecological security is conducive to grasping the current status of an ecosystem's inputs and outputs, which are critical attributes in evaluating tourism ecological security. However, the existing literature still lacks in-depth research. To fill this significant void, this study has three critical aims: (1) create and innovate a new tourism ecological security evaluation model; (2) explore the time evolution and spatial distribution of tourism ecological security; and (3) identify the critical factors affecting tourism ecological security and build a driving mechanism for tourism ecological security. To address these unsolved and crucial questions, this study will use the Slack Based Measure-Data Envelopment Analysis (SBM-DEA) to measure tourism ecological security based on the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework. Further, SBM-DEA is an important evaluation model of ecological efficiency, DPSIR is a comprehensive evaluation framework that includes social, economic, ecological factors, etc. The combination of these two methods can benefit to the innovation of tourism ecological security evaluation methods. Further, China’ s Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration is chosen as the study site, and some methods, including space autocorrelation and geo-detectors, are applied to explore the spatial and temporal patterns and driving factors of tourism ecological security. Lastly, some of our results may provide solutions for the sustainable development of tourism in the future.

Innovations and theoretical and practical contributions are provided in this study. First, our research focuses on critical issues unsolved by previous studies regarding the “equality” evaluation of tourism ecological security from the perspective of efficiency, rather than a simple “quantity” measurement. Specifically, the DPSIR-DEA analysis framework, different from the previous model, is able to consider the comprehensiveness and scientific nature of the evaluation from other dimensions. Further, it provides an innovative evaluation model and research method to measure tourism ecological security. Second, the method to identify critical impact factors used in this study is more effective than the regression model used in previous influence research (Qiu et al., 2017). The Geo-Detector method applied in this study is a new method to explore the influence factors in the field of tourism geography. It can effectively identify the critical factors pertaining to tourism ecological security and help to build a tourism ecosystem operation mechanism. This study not only contributes to discovering the time and space heterogeneity of tourism ecological security but also fills in the gap in the tourism ecological security evaluation model. Moreover, the critical influencing factors and driving mechanisms of this research provide a theoretical reference and policy implications for sustainable tourism development.

Section snippets

Tourism ecological security

Ecological security is one of the important fields of sustainable development research in tourism destinations (Liu et al., 2009). Tourism ecological security is a state that ensures the normal functioning of the tourism ecosystem and shows a healthy and stable operation. The balanced conditions of an effective development of tourism, economy and ecology can satisfy the sustainable development of tourism (Dong, 2004). It should be noted that tourism ecological security research is still in its

DPSIR-DEA model

The DPSIR-DEA framework was used to measure the tourism ecological security of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is an analytical method proposed by two American operation researchers, Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes in 1978 to evaluate relative efficiency. However, because of today's more complex economic, social and ecological systems, the selection of a single DEA indicator faces a series problems, such as incompleteness and lack of rationality. Thus, the combination

Temporal evolution characteristics

According to formula (1), Max DEA software was used to calculate the tourism ecological security evaluation values for 2011–2016 in the YRD. As shown in Table 2, tourism ecological security of the YRD displayed an “N” type time evolution law of “first rise – then fall – then rise again”. The average values of tourism ecological security in 2011–2016 were 0.667, 0.741, 0.735, 0.543, 0.652 and 0.696, respectively for each year. The results showed a volatility growth trend with an overall security

Conclusions

Based on ecological pattern and ecosystem theory, a DPSIR-DEA model was proposed to evaluate tourism ecological security. Taking the YRD as a study site, this study discussed the spatial and temporal distribution of tourism ecological security and its crucial driving factors. Moreover, the driving mechanism of tourism ecological security was constructed. Our research produced some new findings:

First, from the perspective of time evolution, the tourism ecological security of the YRD showed an

Acknowledgments

This research is supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 17BGL114) for fifinancial support.

Wenqi Ruan is Ph.D of management, an associate researcher of College of Tourism, Huaqiao University, China. His academic research areas cover tourism destination management, tourism geographic, tourism information, etc.

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    Wenqi Ruan is Ph.D of management, an associate researcher of College of Tourism, Huaqiao University, China. His academic research areas cover tourism destination management, tourism geographic, tourism information, etc.

    Yongquan Li is a professor of tourism research and dean of International School at Huaqiao University. He also serves as Director of Research Center of Tourism and Hospitality Management. His research interest focuses on tourism industry development, tourism innovation management, tourism human resource management etc.

    Shuning Zhang is a Ph.D student of College of Tourism, Huaqiao University, China. Her research interests include in tourism destination management, cultural and creative tourism and tourist market marketing.

    Chih-Hsing Liu is an assistant professor of Department of Leisure & Recreation Management at Ming Chuan University. His current research interests are in the area of tourism management, creativity, knowledge management and social network. His papers have been published in the Tourism Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Sustainable Tourism and others.

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