A Projection Pursuit Dynamic Cluster Model for Tourism Safety Early Warning and Its Implications for Sustainable Tourism

Abstract

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, tourism promotes sustainable economic development. Ensuring tourism safety is an essential prerequisite for its sustainable development. In this paper, based on the three evaluation index systems for tourism safety early warning and the collected sample data, we establish three projection pursuit dynamic cluster (PPDC) models by applying group search optimization, a type of swarm intelligence algorithm. Based on case studies, it is confirmed that the results derived from the PPDC models are consistent with the expert judgments. The importance of the evaluation indicators can be sorted and classified according to the obtained optimal projection pursuit vector coefficients, and the tourism risks of the destinations can be ranked according to the sample projection values. Among the three aspects influencing tourism safety in case one, the stability of the tourism destination has the most significant impact, followed by the frequency of disasters. Of the ten evaluation indicators, the frequency of epidemic disease affects tourism safety the most, and the unemployment ratio affects it the second most. Overall, the PPDC model can be adopted for tourism safety early warning with high-dimensional non-linear and non-normal distribution data modeling, as it overcomes the “curse of dimensionality” and the limitations associated with small sample sizes.