Research on Tourism Carrying Capacity and the Coupling Coordination Relationships between Its Influencing Factors: A Case Study of China

Abstract

The large increase in the number of tourists brings challenges to the tourist carrying capacity of tourist destinations. By constructing a tourism carrying capacity indicator system and a coupling coordination model, we calculate and compare the development of tourism carrying capacity and the coupling coordination between all first-class indicators of tourism carrying capacity for provinces and cities in China. We find that the tourism carrying capacity and the coupling coordination between all first-class indicators of tourism carrying capacity for provinces and cities in China both showed an upward trend from 2008 to 2017, but the development was not balanced. In coastal provinces, their development level was high although lately showing a downward trend. In the provinces of the northwest China, their development level is low, and their development speed is relatively slow. The provinces and cities in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and the southwest China recorded the fastest growth rate. In addition, we found that the development of tourism carrying capacity is closely related to coupling coordination between all first-class indicators of tourism carrying capacity.