Coupling coordination between environment, economy and tourism: A case study of China

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 15; no. 2; p. e0228426
• Main Authors: Lai, Zhizhu, Ge, Dongmei, Xia, Haibin, Yue, Yanlin, Wang, Zheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 04-02-2020; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Biology and Life Sciences; Case reports; Case studies; China; Conservation of Natural Resources - methods; Coordination; Coupling; Ecology; Ecology and Environmental Sciences; Economic aspects; Economic Development; Economics; Ecosystem; Education; Endowments; Environment; Environmental impact; Environmental protection; Geographic information science; Laboratories; People and Places; Physical Sciences; Provinces; Social Sciences; Spatial Analysis; Spatial distribution; Subsystems; Sustainable development; Tourism; Variation; China
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0228426

How to achieve the sustainable and coordinated development of the ecological environment, the economy and tourism has already received much attention. In this paper, a comprehensive evaluation index system of the ecological environment, the economy and tourism is established, and the coupling degrees and coordination degrees of the three subsystems of 31 provinces in China from 2003 to 2017 are calculated. The results show that the average coupling degree and average coordination degree have fluctuating upward trends during the period of 2003-2017. According to the spatial distribution of the coupling degrees and coordination degrees, the coastal provinces and Chongqing, with their high ecological environment pressure and good economic development, have low coupling and extremely high coordination levels. The vast central and western provinces with good ecological environment protection and economic backwardness have high coupling and low coordination development level. From the perspective of coordinated development, only seven of the western provinces and three middle-eastern provinces possess basic coordinated development of the ecological environment, the economy and tourism. The remaining 21 provinces are over-utilizing or sacrificing their ecological environments, among which eleven eastern provinces have an advanced economy or advanced tourism and five southwestern provinces with high tourism resource endowments have an advanced tourism.